The Enduring Struggle Over Professionalism in English Football from 1883 to 1963: a Marxist Analysis

University of Southampton Faculty of Business, Law & Art

The Enduring Struggle Over Professionalism in English Football From 1883 to 1963: A Marxist Analysis

By Hugo Marangos

Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

July 2017

Abstract

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON ABSTRACT FACULTY OF BUSINESS, LAW & ART Philosophy Doctor of Philosophy THE ENDURING STRUGGLE OVER PROFESSIONALISM IN ENGLISH FOOTBALL FROM 1883 TO 1963: A MARXIST ANALYSIS by Hugo Marangos

This thesis takes a Marxist perspective on English football from 1883 to 1963 and charts the struggle between those who governed, the Football Association and the Football League and those whom they governed, the professional players. This was not only a struggle between opposing groups but also a struggle between opposing classes operating within the society/industry of English football. A struggle that was to endure as a result of the diametrically opposed ideologies each class held about the presence and/or purpose of the professional player. For the purpose of this research the cotton industry was used as a comparator from which developments in English football could be gauged to suggest that professional players had managed to successfully overcome the ideological domination of the governing bodies of English football, thus instigating a working-class revolution. Marx’s prediction for a workers’ revolution may not have materialised for the ordinary working class during the nineteenth century, however, this thesis suggests that such a revolution did occur in English football, post-1961, when the professional players and their Union representatives, the PFA, successfully fought for the removal of the maximum wage and the retain-and-transfer system.

Table of Contents Page

Title 1

Abstract 2

Table of Contents 3

Declaration of Authorship 4

Acknowledgements 5

Abbreviations 6

Literature Review 7

Research Methodology 21

Introduction 35

Chapter One: 1883-1885 53

Chapter Two: 1885-1886 73

Chapter Three: 1888-1901 81

Chapter Four: 1907-1911 115

Chapter Five: 1957-1963 141

Conclusion 161

References 181

Bibliography 189

Declaration of Authorship

I, ...... [please print name] declare that this thesis and the work presented in it are my own and has been generated by me as the result of my own original research.

[title of thesis] ......

......

I confirm that:

1. This work was done wholly or mainly while in candidature for a research degree at this University;

2. Where any part of this thesis has previously been submitted for a degree or any other qualification at this University or any other institution, this has been clearly stated;

3. Where I have consulted the published work of others, this is always clearly attributed;

4. Where I have quoted from the work of others, the source is always given. With the exception of such quotations, this thesis is entirely my own work;

5. I have acknowledged all main sources of help;

6. Where the thesis is based on work done by myself jointly with others, I have made clear exactly what was done by others and what I have contributed myself;

7. None of this work has been published before submission.

Signed: ......

Date: ......

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisors, Mr Phil Palmer and Dr David Gurnham, for their support, wisdom and guidance throughout the duration of my thesis, without which I would never have been capable of completing my research.

I would also like to thank the University of Southampton for accepting me onto the MPhil/PhD course in 2012 and for giving me the opportunity to research such an intensely rewarding field of study. The satisfaction and pride that I have derived from this research will remain with me for many years to come.

Lastly, I would like to thank my parents, Mrs Ann Marangos and Dr Anthony Marangos for their continued support, both financially and emotionally, during not only the time of writing this thesis but also throughout my life. Everything I have achieved I have done to make them proud.

Dr Hugo Marangos

Abbreviations

Association Football Players’ and Trainers’ Union – AFPTU Association Football Players’ Union – AFPU Football Association – FA Football League – FL General Federation of Trade Unions – GFTU Professional Footballers’ Association – PFA

Literature Review

The purpose of this research was to ascertain, whether or not, Marxist theory,1 i.e. Marx’s theory of ideology, Marx’s social conflict theory, and Marx’s concept of a modern bourgeois society, is able to explain the enduring class struggle over professionalism in English football, from 1883 to 1963, between the Football Association2 (FA), the Football League3 (FL) and the working-class professional players, their clubs and their Union representatives, the Players’ Union4. Primarily, however, research would be focused on the period from 1863 when the FA ‘first codified English football, exclusively for the enjoyment of the (elite) amateur gentleman who did not play for pay (but rather) for the sheer joy it’ (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p.4) until 1883 when English football was deemed to have been totally misappropriated by the professional players and their employers. Since then the wages, freedom of movement, and overall employment conditions of the professional players in England can be categorised into four distinct periods of time. The first, from 1883 to 1885, when the illicit payment of wages to professional players was first detected by the FA – who in response would suspend those players and football clubs found guilty of such an offence from participating in competitions under their remit; the second, from 1885 to 1888 when professionalism was deemed a legal activity by the FA with clubs free to pay, without restriction, wages to their players; the third, from 1888 to 1961, characterised by the formation of the FL in 1888, their introduction of the retain-and- transfer system5 in 1893 and the introduction of the FA’s maximum wage6 in 1900 – employment conditions which would greatly hinder the movement and earning capabilities of professional players; and the fourth, post-1961, where clubs, at the behest of the PFA, were once again free to pay their players, without restriction, in conjunction with a gradually disintegrating retain-and-transfer system.

In order for such a Marxist analysis to be possible it would first be necessary to gain an extensive knowledge of English football during the period in question through a considered and extensive analysis of the available literature. Whether these works were

1 ‘Economic and political theory of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It holds that actions and human institutions are economically determined, that the class struggle is the basic agency of historical change, and that capitalism will ultimately be superseded by communism’ (McLeod, 1990, p.614). 2 The governing body of Association football in England founded in 1863. 3 The FL, founded in 1888, enabled professional football clubs, for the first time, to play pre-arranged matches against one another. 4 The Players’ Union, which sort to protect, improve and negotiate the conditions, rights and status of all professional players by collective bargaining agreements. 5 A transfer system created by the FL in 1893, which greatly restricted the movement of players from one club to another. 6 A limit on the amount a professional player could earn each week.

directly cited or whether they were used as a method of expanding and diversifying knowledge they would share equal importance in the overall context of this thesis. The literature deemed most pertinent to this endeavour was as follows: Dougan and Young’s On the spot: Football as a profession, Harding’s For the good of the game, Harding and Taylor’s Living to play: From soccer slave to socceratti – A social history of the professionals, Inglis’ Soccer in the dock, Sander’s Beastly fury: The strange birth of British football, Young’s A history of British football, Brown’s Victorian football miscellany, Bower’s Broken dreams: Vanity, greed and the souring of British football, and Marples’ A history of football.

The reading of this literature, on a macro level, would not only act as an invaluable tool to gaining a more in depth, well-rounded understanding of the period of English football in question but also as a means to generate pathways, on a micro level, for unearthing the most prominent and influential individuals and organisations involved in this storied history, i.e. William Sudell, C.W. Alcock, the FA, the FL, the Players’ Union, etc. In this respect in order to gain a better understanding of the FA, why they perceived professionalism to be an ‘accursed weed (and) a serious evil’ (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p.3), why from 1883 to 1885 they handed out suspensions to those football players and football clubs found guilty of engaging in professionalism, why they decided to legalise professionalism in 1885 and why they decided to introduce the maximum wage in 1900, the following literature was deemed most useful: Gibson and Pickford’s Association football and the men who made it, Keeton’s The football revolution: A study of the changing pattern of Association football, Golesworthy’s The encyclopaedia of Association football, Butler’s The official history of the Football Association, Bragg’s The rules of the Football Association, and Kelly’s Sweet F.A.: A fascinating insight into football’s corridors of power.

In contrast it was necessary to understand why the professional players and their employers believed professionalism to be ‘no way injurious to the best intentions of the game’ (Young, 1969, p.118). As a result the following literature was deemed most useful: Eastham’s Determined to win, Finney’s Finney on football, Firmani’s Football with the millionaires, Guthrie’s Soccer rebel: The evolution of the professional footballer, Stiles’ Soccer my battlefield, Hill’s Striking for soccer, Harding’s Football wizard: The story of Billy Meredith, Dunphy’s A strange kind of glory: Sir Matt Busby & Manchester United, and Mourant’s Don Revie: Portrait of a footballing enigma. The reading of these player and manager autobiographies and biographies was fundamental to understanding why the professional players had chosen from 1883 to 1885 to defy the

FA’s edict by engaging in professionalism, why they had fought so vociferously for the legalisation of professionalism in 1885 and the extent to which they had struggled, as a result of the actions of the FA and the FL, to establish ‘both their status as professionals and their normal rights as working men’ (Taylor and Harding, 2003, p.IX) from 1883 to 1963. Additionally the reading of this form of literature, in contrast to that chosen for the FA, would allow for a more candid, unfiltered perspective not traditionally found in the conventional history book. While the majority of this literature would not be directly referenced within the thesis its analysis was necessary for the formation of a more balanced and informed approach to understanding the plight of the professional player, a feat that may have otherwise been lacking. The sheer anguish resonating from these personal accounts, written by football players and managers throughout the period in question, would shape a more sympathetic approach to understanding and explaining the predicament of the professional that may have otherwise been more pejorative and decisively lacking in its Marxist tendency.

Additionally, it would be necessary to gain a better understanding of the role of the FL throughout this history – an undertaking that was achieved through the reading of the following literature: Hardaker’s Hardaker of the League, Metcalf’s The origins of the Football League: The first season 1888/89, Churchill’s English League football and Taylor’s The Leaguers: The making of professional football in England – 1900-1939. The reading of this literature would offer an alternate perspective about the presence of the professional in English football, one inexorably separated from that of the FA, which would help develop an understanding as to why the organisation was originally formed in 1888, i.e. to maintain ‘size and shape of the League’ (Harding, 1991, p.3) and why they decided to introduce the retain-and-transfer system in 1893, i.e. to allow smaller clubs to keep their players, – decisions that would ultimately shape the relationship between the FA and the professional players, their football clubs and the Players’ Union over the next seventy years. In researching the FL it was decided to choose a variety of literature types, including the autobiographical, i.e. Hardaker of the League, a forthright and highly prejudiced account of the FL put forth by Alan Hardaker – a man who was secretary of the FL in 1957 at a time when English football was experiencing its most turbulent period and contrasting and counterbalancing it, for example, with the considered, traditional history text book and their offering of a more impartial, factual and contemplative analysis of the FL and its storied history.

Furthermore, it would be necessary to gain a better understanding of the purpose behind the formation of the original Players’ Union in 1897, the Association of Football

Players’ Union (AFPU), i.e. to ‘suggest alternative methods of running League football (by forging) a negotiating link based on equality of status with the Football League and the FA’ (Harding, 2009, p.15), its subsequent demise in 1901 as a result of its failed attempt to reform the retain-and-transfer system, its reformation in 1907 as the Association of Football Players’ and Trainers’ Union (AFPTU), its rebranding in 1957 as the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA), its most prominent and influential members, i.e. Charles Saer, Billy Meredith, Jimmy Hill, Cliff Lloyd, etc., and its ability post-1961 to force the FA and the FL into removing the maximum wage and the retain- and-transfer system. This task would be achieved through the reading of the following literature: Harding’s Behind the glory: 100 years of the PFA, and For the good of the game, Harding and Taylor’s Living to play: From soccer slave to socceratti – A social history of the professionals, Hill’s Striking for soccer, and Eastham’s Determined to win. The decision was taken once again to choose an assortment of contrasting literature types, including the personal and visceral accounts of those who had worked at the organisation during the period in question, i.e. Hill and Lloyd, and those written by members of the organisation during more modern times, i.e. Harding and Taylor, whose revisionist approach to explaining the period in question had the propensity to stand in opposition or solidarity to that of their historical counterparts. Such an approach would help to understand, whether or not, the actions of the Union from 1897 to 1863 were still agreeable from a modern perspective and, whether or not, such actions would be committed by the PFA presently if the status and rights of the professional players were once again infringed upon by the governing bodies of English football.

Once an extensive knowledge of the most significant individuals and organisations involved in the enduring struggle over professionalism from 1883 to 1963 had been achieved it would be necessary to view the society of English football through the prism of Karl Marx’s social conflict theory/theory of social development and social revolution. For Marx society was in a:

‘state of perpetual conflict (whereby the) social order (was) maintained by domination and power, rather than consensus and conformity. Those with wealth and power try to hold on to it by any means possible, chiefly by suppressing the poor and powerless. Marx’s conflict theory focused on the conflict between two primary classes. The bourgeoisie (which) represents the members of society who hold the majority of the wealth and means (and) the proletariat (which) includes those considered working class or poor. With the rise of capitalism, Marx theorized that the bourgeoisie, a minority within the

population, would use their influence to oppress the proletariat, the majority class. The uneven distribution within conflict theory was predicted to be maintained through ideological coercion where the bourgeoisie would force acceptance of the current conditions by the proletariat’ (Investopedia, 1999).

In one of Marx’s most seminal pieces of work, The Communist Manifesto, he would label this form of society a modern bourgeois society. A society, which he believed had ‘sprouted from the ruins of feudal society (and had) not done away with class antagonisms. It (had) established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of old ones. (A) society as a whole (that was) more and more splitting into two great classes directly facing each other’ (Marx and Engels, 1967, p.80).

Marx believed that the proletariat had:

‘to bear all the burdens of society without enjoying its advantages, which ousted from society, is forced into the most decided antagonism to all other classes; a class which forms the majority of all members of society, and from which emanates the consciousness of the necessity of a fundamental revolution, the communist consciousness, which may, of course, arise among the other classes too through the contemplation of the situation of this class.

The communistic revolution is directed against the preceding mode of activity, does away with labour, and abolishes the rule of all classes with the classes themselves, because it is carried through by the class which no longer counts as a class in society, is not recognized as a class, and is in itself the expression of the dissolution of all classes … within present society. For the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew’ (Marx, 2011, pp.68-69).

Placing English football, post-1900, contextually within this modern bourgeois framework, the FL would assume the role of the bourgeoisie, i.e. an organisation

‘founded by … shopkeepers, minor government officials, small businessmen’ (Harding, 1991, p.1), a class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour, while the professional players and their Union representatives would assume the role of the proletariat i.e. ‘the people who labored for wages … who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live’ (Marx and Engels, 1967, pp.79-80). Furthermore, the FA, considered as ‘an upper-class elite’ (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p.3) would assume the role of the aristocracy, i.e. ‘a privileged class in society; the nobility’ (McLeod, 1990, p.48), the class in a modern bourgeois society that Marx believed would eventually be ‘replaced by the capitalists’ (Marx and Engels, 1967, pp.79-80). However, rather than attempting to replace the FA, the establishment of the FL and their introduction of the retain-and-transfer system would be viewed as a method, in collaboration with the FA and their introduction of the maximum wage, to ideologically coerce the professional players and their Union representatives into accepting employment conditions that would enable their organisations to assert and maintain their domination and power in English football.

Ideological coercion in this regard would be defined by Marx’s theory of ideology, which was to stipulate that ideology was:

‘an instrument in the hands of the rulers … employed to exercise control and domination. Moreover, the filtering of interests through a container – ideology – permitted them, and ideology itself to be represented as if they were truth-claims that possessed universal, rational validity. That representation assisted the wielders of ideology in forging the myth of a unified political community, through illusory laws (and) cultural direction’ (Freeden, 2003, p.6).

In this regard the FL’s decision in 1893, for example, to introduce the retain-and-transfer system would be viewed as a method to suppress the poor and powerless, the professional players, for the purpose of forging the myth of a unified political community in English football. While the FL would publicly state that its purpose was to maintain:

‘the size and shape of the League (so that) smaller clubs – could be certain of keeping their players from season to season instead of having them snatched by bigger, wealthier clubs (in reality it enabled) clubs to earn massive amounts of money (while the professional players were) no better than a piece of

merchandise … (unable) to negotiate a new contract on anything like equal terms with their employers’ (Harding, 1991, pp.3, 5).

Such a situation for the professional players would remain in situ for seventy years. It would not be until 1963 that the PFA would be successful in their attempts to force the FL into abolishing the retain-and-transfer system (Harding and Taylor, 1991, p.287). I suggest that the PFA’s ability to accomplish their objective would be achieved through an instilling of a collective (class) consciousness within the professional players, i.e. the Sunderland affair of 1957 (Harding, 1991, p.270). An eventuality that would represent a working-class revolution in English football, one analogous to that predicted by Marx in 1870 – a revolution he dubbed as ‘a necessary revolution, one necessarily arising out of the … irreducible structural antagonism between capital and labor’ (Hearn, 1978, p.246).

In order for such a Marxist analysis of English football to be carried out a comprehensive understanding of Marxist theory was therefore needed. The following literature was deemed most useful for this endeavour: Marx’s Capital, The German ideology and The communist manifesto, Engels’ The condition of the English working class, Hearn’s Domination, legitimation and resistance: The incorporation of the nineteenth-century English working class, Eagleton’s Ideology: An introduction, and Freeden’s Ideology: A very short introduction.

It is important to note that in researching Marxist theory it was decided to apply a synthesis of primary sources, i.e. Capital, and secondary/contemporary sources, i.e. Ideology: A very short introduction, to explain certain characteristics of the behaviour of both the cotton and the football industries’ most influential protagonists. The application of these secondary sources, it was hoped, would allow this thesis to be more accessible, from a linguistic standpoint, to a wider audience than it would have been possible with the sole application of the primary sources. Their application, however, was not for the purpose of oversimplifying complex theoretical perspectives but rather to aid in those circumstances where the language in the primary sources was incapable of clarifying certain behavioural characteristics in a concise and satisfactory manner. Additionally, the application of both primary and secondary sources would enable a broad sweep of the existing literature on Marxist theory to be utilised thus allowing a balance to be struck between those Marxist perspectives put forth in the 19th century texts and those offered during the 21st century.

However, where traditional Marxist theory, in either primary or secondary form, was incapable of adequately explaining a particular facet of the enduring struggle over professionalism in English football, for example, the FA’s attempt to curtail the professional players’ alcohol consumption during the mid-twentieth century (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p.10), a working-class culture of the English game, attention would be directed towards the neo-Marxist theories7 of Antonio Gramsci (Ideological Hegemony), Karl Mannheim (Sociology of Knowledge), Jürgen Habermas (Immanent Criticism), Herbert Marcuse (theory of One-Dimensionality), and John B. Thompson’s (Critical Conception of Ideology). The following literature was deemed most appropriate for this undertaking: Gramsci’s Selections from cultural writings, Mannheim’s Ideology and utopia, Habermas’ Structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society, Marcuse’s One-dimensional man, Thompson’s Studies in the theory of ideology, and Finlayson’s Habermas: A very short introduction. It is important to note again that in researching neo-Marxist theory it was also decided to apply a synthesis of primary sources, i.e. Structural transformation of the public sphere, and secondary/contemporary sources, i.e. Habermas: A very short introduction, in order to explain certain characteristics of the behaviour of both the cotton and the football industries’ most influential protagonists.

Such an analysis of these alternate theoretical perspectives, in either primary or secondary form, was necessary for the building of a more nuanced appreciation of the various techniques the FA and the FL were to employ in order to assert their domination and power over the professional players. While traditional Marxist theory was capable of explaining how such organisations were able to impose economic domination – maximum wage, and political domination – professional players perennially prevented from having a say on matters pertaining to their employment (Harding, 1991, p.42), such theory, it was found, was incapable of sufficiently explaining the implementation of those techniques designed to impose cultural domination over the professional players. For example, the FA’s attempts to eradicate the working-class culture of paying wages and bonuses above and beyond the maximum wage, a culture/tradition of the professional players, through the handing out of sine die suspensions (Harding, 1991, p.270) and the ability of the professional players and their Union representatives to overcome such domination through collective bargain agreements and strike action (Hardaker, 1977, p.82). The eventual removal of the maximum wage in 1961 at the

7 ‘Neo-Marxism is a loose term for various twentieth-century approaches that amend or extend Marxism and Marxist theory, usually by incorporating elements from other intellectual traditions, such as: critical theory, psychoanalysis or existentialism’ (MarkForster.net, 1998).

behest of the PFA would put paid to the FA’s ability to impose cultural domination over the professional players – an eventuality that could, for example, be explained better by Mannheim’s theory of the sociology of knowledge (Freeden, 2003, p.15) than by traditional Marxist theory. Rather than seek to supplant and critique traditional Marxist theory, neo-Marxist theory would be used as an instrument to compliment and support its application. Collectively their application could pose a valid explanation as to how the FA and the FL had been able, for such a sustained period of time, to impose ‘cultural domination as well as economic and political domination’ (Hearn, 1978, p.259) over the professional players and how, for example, the latter would eventually be capable of overcoming such domination – an undertaking that Marxist theory on its own was incapable of.

In addition to the examination of English football from 1883 to 1963 for the purpose of this research the cotton industry, from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, would be used as a comparator from which developments in English football could be evaluated. While Marx’s forecast for a workers’ revolution (Hearn, 1978, p.245) may not have materialised for the ordinary working class in industries such as the cotton industry during the aforementioned period this thesis suggests that such a revolution did occur in English football, post-1961, when the professional players and their Union representatives, the PFA, successfully fought for the removal of the maximum wage and the retain-and-transfer system. Focus would be directed towards identifying the most prominent individuals and institutions within this industry, for example, Richard Arkwright – inventor of the water frame and father of the factory system, Robert Owen – manager of New Lanark cotton mill and factory reformer (Morton, 1962, p26), Richard Marsden – handloom weaver and lead representative of the Preston Chartists who lobbied government to enact the Six Points of the People’s Charter (King, 1981, p.3), and the Chartists – a national association for the working class created to effect real social change through the political process.

In order to gain a better understanding of the cotton industry the following literature was deemed most useful: Hearn’s Domination, legitimation and resistance: The incorporation of the nineteenth-century English working class, Burton’s Life in the mill, Engels’ The condition of the working class in England, Hills’ Richard Arkwright and cotton spinning, King’s Richard Marsden and the Preston Chartists: 1837-1848, Butt’s Robert Owen: Prince of the cotton spinners, and Morton’s The life and ideas of Robert Owen. The purpose of identifying the cotton industries’ most prominent individuals and institutions was to enable comparisons to be made in order to better understand why, for

example, the Preston Chartists had failed to coerce the government into enacting the Six Points of the People’s Charter, thus failing to generate a working-class revolution during the mid-nineteenth century, while the professional players and their Union representatives had managed to achieve such a feat, post-1961, by successfully coercing the FA and the FL into abolishing the maximum wage and the retain-and-transfer.

The decision to choose the cotton industry as a comparator was originally based on six main points of interest. First, the readymade Marxist analysis of the cotton industry offered, for example, by Engels in The condition of the working class in England would enable comparisons from a Marxist perspective to be drawn with the football industry. Secondly, mechanised cotton production and professional football both originated from the city of Preston, Lancashire. Thirdly, the men responsible for revolutionising and industrialising their respective industries both resided and worked in Preston, Lancashire. Richard Arkwright – inventor of the water frame8 and father of the factory system,9 and William Sudell, the man responsible for coercing the FA into legalising professionalism in 1885 (Sanders, 2009, p.106) was simultaneously a cotton mill manager in the city (Goodair cotton mill) and Chairman of Preston North End football club. Fourthly, legislation introduced by the government at the behest of the manufacturing class during the nineteenth century, acts of Parliament that were to deeply effect the lives of the cotton workers, i.e. the 1832 Reform Act10 and the 1834 New Poor Law,11 could be compared and contrasted with the FL’s introduction of the retain-and-transfer system in 1893 and the FA’s introduction of the maximum wage in 1900. Fifthly, class structure in eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain was characterised by an aristocratic government, a bourgeois manufacturing class and a

8 ‘This spinning machine spins 96 strands of yarn at once. It was one of many similar machines installed in mills in Derbyshire and Lancashire and powered by waterwheels, so they were called Water Frames. Now it is only the complete machine of its kind in the world. His machine did not need skilled operators so Arkwright paid unskilled women and others (children) to work on them. His spinning mills were the earliest examples of factories where hundreds of workers had to keep pace with the speed of the machines ’ (BBC, 2004). 9 A ‘system of manufacturing that began in the 18th century and is based on the concentration of industry into specialized—and often large—establishments. The system arose in the course of the Revolution. The factory system replaced the domestic system, in which individual workers used hand tools or simple machinery to fabricate goods in their own homes or in workshops attached to their homes. The use of waterpower and then the steam engine to mechanize processes such as cloth weaving in England in the second half of the 18th century marked the beginning of the factory system’ (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2006). 10 ‘The Representation of the People Act 1832, known as the first Reform Act or Great Reform Act: disenfranchised 56 boroughs in England and Wales and reduced another 31 to only one MP, created 67 new constituencies, broadened the franchise's property qualification in the counties, to include small landowners, tenant farmers, and shopkeepers, created a uniform franchise in the boroughs, giving the vote to all householders who paid a yearly rental of £10 or more and some lodgers’ (Parliament, 2008). 11 ‘In 1834 the Poor Law Amendment Act was passed by Parliament. This was designed to reduce the cost of looking after the poor as it stopped money going to poor people except in exceptional circumstances’ (BBC, 2012).

working class/proletarian workforce, a class structure that was comparable to that of English football from 1863 to 1963 – a society characterised by an aristocratic FA, a bourgeois FL and the working class/proletarian professional players. Sixthly, the successes and failures of those who took it upon themselves to improve the lot of the working class/proletariat in their respective industries could also be compared and contrasted. For example, the ability of Robert Owen12 to persuade Parliament to pass the 1819 factory act (Butt, 1971, p.117) and Richard Marsden and Preston Chartists failure to persuade Parliament to enact the Six Points of the People’s Charter13 during the 1840s (King, 1981, p.3) could be compared and contrasted with the failure of the AFPU in 1898 to coerce the FA into abolishing the retain-and-transfer system (Harding, 1991, p.23) and the ability of the PFA to pressure the FA and the FL into abolishing the maximum wage in 1961 (Harding, 1991, p.278) and the retain-and-transfer system in 1963 (Harding, 1991, p.288).

Moreover while the main focus of this thesis was devoted to the period of time from 1883 to 1963 additional research would be conducted, post-1963, to gain an understanding of the contemporary relevance of Marxist theory to English football in order to ascertain, whether or not, class struggle was still to exist in English football, post-1961, after the removal of the maximum wage and retain-and-transfer system. For this to be achieved attention was directed towards four main areas of interest: the issue of spectator hooliganism at English football stadia from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, the continued dispute over professional players’ wages in 2017, the reluctance of Premier League football clubs in London to pay their operational staff the London Living Wage and the Football Supporters’ Federation’s effort, from 2013 to 2017, through the introduction of their Twenty’s Plenty campaign, to encourage the Premier League into capping away ticket prices at £20.

Consequently, in order to understand the contemporary relevance of Marxist theory to English football, with specific focus on spectator hooliganism from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, the following literature was deemed most useful: Human Kinetics’ Soccer

12 ‘Robert Owen was a man ahead of his time. During his lifetime, he endeavoured to improve the health, education, well-being and rights of the working class. This driving ambition to create a better society for all took him around the world, from a small mill village in Lanarkshire in Scotland to New Harmony, Indiana in America with varied success. Although, he encountered much criticism and opposition in his lifetime, he influenced reformers who came after him and many of his views are as relevant and resonate today in their modernity and progressive nature’ (Robert Owen and New Lanark, 2000). 13 Six Points of the People’s Charter: ‘(1) A vote for every man over 21 years of age. (2) A Secret ballot (instead of the system for voting in public). (3) MPs do not have to own property. (4) MPs will be paid. (5) Equal voting constituencies. (6) An election every year for Parliament’ (BBC, 2013).

hooliganism as an English and world problem, Teeside University’s The way it was: An account of soccer violence in the 1980s, Politics’ Football hooliganism, The University of Exeter’s Policing European football hooliganism, Sir Norman Chester Centre for Football Research’s Football and football hooliganism, Social Issues Research Centre’s Football violence in Europe, The University of Birmingham’s Football hooliganism and the skinheads, Academia.edu’s Towards a sociological understanding of football hooliganism as a world phenomenon, Dunning’s The roots of football hooliganism: An historical and sociological study, Spaaij’s Understanding football hooliganism: A comparison of six western football clubs, and Stimpfle’s English football hooliganism – A different social movement. The purpose of this undertaking was to ascertain, whether or not, spectator hooliganism in English football could be described as a ‘working-class resistance movement’ (Stimpfle, 2009, p.8) standing in direct opposition to the football elite and their unremitting commodification of the game or if such behaviour was instead ‘driven by the Hooligans’ quest to feel emotionally arousal (and not as) as some kind of movement against the football elites in order to fight the commercialization of the game’ (Stimpfle, 2009, pp.8-9).

Additionally, in order to gain a better understanding of the contemporary relevance of Marxist theory to English football, with specific focus on the dispute over wages paid to professional players’ in 2017, the following articles in The Guardian newspaper were deemed most useful: Jeremy Corbyn calls for maximum wage law and Using footballers’ wages as an example of excess is patronising and lazy. The purpose of this undertaking was to ascertain, whether or not, such a dispute was representative of a revival of those arguments over player’ wages that had characterised the first hundred years of English football between the FA and the professional players themselves (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p.IX). Focus was directed towards, leader of the Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn’s assertion that a wage cap was needed in Britain in order to reduce inequality, citing wages paid to football players as ‘simply ridiculous’ (The Guardian, 2017a) and, columnist for The Guardian, Marina Hyde’s retort that ‘whingeing about footballers’ wages (was) not a big idea (as) top-flight football (was) one of the few engines of social mobility that still works in this country … (an industry that had) a ‘remorseless habit of creating working-class millionaires’ (The Guardian, 2017 b).

Furthermore, in order to enhance understanding of the contemporary relevance of Marxist theory to English football, with specific focus on the reluctance of Premier League clubs in London to pay their operational staff the London Living Wage, the

following articles in the Croydon Advertiser and the Evening Standard were deemed most useful and appropriate: Sadiq Khan urges Crystal Palace to pay its staff the London Living Wage and Sadiq Khan demands London’s top football clubs pay living wage. While football in England had traditionally provided a mechanism for working- class professional players to ascend the social strata, the purpose of this undertaking was to ascertain, why the operational staff at Premier League football clubs in London had not been afforded the same luxury and whether such a reality represented the existence of contemporary class struggle in English football. Focus was directed towards the declaration by Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, that it could not be right that so many ‘hard-working Londoners (were) struggling to make ends meet and keep up with the high cost of living’ (Croydon Advertiser, 2017).

Finally, in order to better appreciate the contemporary relevance of Marxist theory to English football, with specific focus on the Football Supporters’ Federation’s effort to persuade the Premier League to cap away ticket prices clubs at £20 through the implementation of their Twenty’s Plenty campaign, the following articles were deemed most useful: Football Republik’s Working class game, business class prices, History and Policy’s Football ticket prices: A lesson from history, the Socialist Appeal’s Football under capitalism: The rich exploit a working class sport, The Point’s Football under capitalism – The exploitation of a working class sport, the BBC’s Premier League to cap cost of tickets for away fans at £30, The Guardian’s Twenty’s plenty campaign sets fan sense against Premier League greed and Premier League away fan tickets to be capped at £30 from next season, The Independent’s Premier League ticket prices: £30 price cap applied for away fans in groundbreaking move, the Football Supporters’ Federation’s Twenty’s Plenty: Virgin Media and FSF reimburse away fans’ tickets, and Who Ate All the Pies’ The FSF strike deal with Virgin Media to cap all Premier League away tickets at £20 for first time. The purpose of this endeavour was to ascertain, whether or not, the Football Supporters’ Federation’s efforts could, in contrast to hooliganism, be viewed as a ‘working-class resistance movement’ created in direct opposition to the football elite in English football, i.e. the Premier League, and their pricing-out of the working-class football supporter through unjustifiably high ticket prices. If the Federation were successful could their efforts be viewed as being tantamount to a Marxist working-class revolution – one comparable to that achieved by Hill and Lloyd of the PFA post-1961?

In essence the purpose of this additional research was to identify, whether or not, any of these four points of interest were able to highlight the continued existence of class

struggle and therefore the possibility of a working-class revolution in contemporary English football, post-1961, and whether or not, such exploits could be viewed, in Marxist terms, as comparable to those achieved by the professional players, and their Union representatives during the period of time from 1883 to 1963. The carrying out of such research would not only add to the overall chronology of this thesis but would also provide a suitable and natural conclusion to proceedings.

Research Methodology

First and foremost, the decision was to taken to focus on a facet of English football history that I was unfamiliar with and to explain and understand such a history from a perspective previously underutilised in this field of study. After considerable examination and analysis of the available literature attention was directed to the period of time from 1863 to 1963 and in particular the difficulty that professional players faced ‘in establishing both their status as professionals and their normal rights as working men’ (Harding, and Taylor, 2003, p. IX). Difficulties, for example, that had resulted from the introduction of the FA’s maximum wage in 1900 and the FL’s retain-and- transfer system in 1893. Consensus in the literature was that the professional players’ plight was symptomatic of a class struggle in English football, between an aristocratic FA who deemed football to be a tool for improving ‘the mental and physical health of pubic schoolboys and, later, as a means of instilling concepts such as fair play, combination and camaraderie in those amateur gentlemen of the middle and upper classes’ (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p.3) and a working-class who saw no ill or foul in using football as a means to earn a living as their ‘skill (was) not supported by ample private funds’ (Young, 1969, p.116).

As a result of the importance placed on class in the literature the decision was taken to view such a conception through the filter of Marxist theory, the political and economic theory of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, which was to hold ‘that actions and human institutions (were) economically determined, that class struggle (was) the basic agency of historical change, and that capitalism will ultimately be superseded by communism’ (McLeod, 1990, p.614). The purpose therefore was to see if Marxist theory was able to offer a more in depth, analytical explanation for the struggle that was to endure in English football, one distinct from that posed in the literature. In choosing Marxist theory as a method for explaining the enduring struggle in English football the foundations of this thesis’ theoretical premise had been formed. For example, had the professional players’ struggle to establish their rights and status as working men been a manifestation of class struggle that had endured in English football between, for example, the professional players and the FA, from 1883 to 1963? And had class struggle eventually led to historical change in English football, with capitalism being superseded by communism, post-1961, a transition represented by the abolition and removal of the FA’s maximum wage and the FL’s retain-and-transfer system?

Through an extensive and thorough reading of the literature concerned with Marxist theory, in both primary and secondary form, awareness would initially be directed towards one of Marx and Engels’ most seminal pieces of work, namely The Communist Manifesto. Within this book the concept of a modern bourgeois society was put forth, a society that was split ‘up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat’ (Marx and Engels, 1967, p.80). Within this society the bourgeoisie14 were identified as having generated industry through the exploitation of the proletariat.15 However, in creating such industry the bourgeoisie had brought together, on mass, the proletariat in an industrial setting that had subsequently replaced ‘the isolation of the labourers, due to competition (with) revolutionary combination, due to association’ (Marx and Engels, 1967, p.94). Marx and Engels believed that the bourgeoisie had unintentionally and involuntarily created their own gravediggers whereby their fall and the rise of the proletariat were equally inevitable. The purpose therefore of applying Marx and Engels’ concept of a modern bourgeois society to English football was to see if such a society existed for English football, most notably from 1888 when membership of the FL16 ‘brought with it so many benefits for football clubs, including: a regular flow of income derived from a guaranteed number of fixtures; sustained competition that kept interest high throughout the season; plus rules and regulations designed to bind members together for their own protection’ (Harding, 1991, p.2) until 1963 when the professional players and their Union representatives, the PFA17, sort to challenge the ‘monopoly powers’ (Harding, 1991, p.2) of the FL by coercing them into removing the retain-and-transfer system.

While the existing literature on English football sort to compare and contrast the difficulty professional players’ faced in establishing both their status as professionals and their normal rights as working men with other sports in England (Dougan and Young, 1975), comparisons with the historical plight of labourers in other industries were not forthcoming. As a result, attention was directed towards one of Engels most important pieces of work, namely The condition of the Working Class in England and in particular his account of the plight of the cotton worker in Manchester during the 19th century – an example of a quintessentially Marxist, modern bourgeois society.

14 ‘The class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour’ (Marx and Engels, 1967, p.79). 15 ‘The class of modern wage-labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live’ (Marx and Engels, 1967, p.79). 16 An organisation formed so that clubs could embark upon an ’adventure of earning massive amounts of money’ (Harding, 1991, p.3). 17 An organisation formed to protect, improve and negotiate the conditions, rights and status of all professional players through collective bargaining.

Consequently, the cotton industry, and in particular, the plight of the cotton worker would be used as a comparator with English football and the plight of the working-class professional player. Once the cotton industry had been chosen as a comparator further research into Marxist theory would lead to the discovery of Marx’s theory of social development and social revolution (Hearn, 1978, p.244). Upon:

‘his arrival in London in 1849, Marx became a keen observer of all aspects of English life – its history, economic system, political institutions, values, and, above all, its class structure and social movements. On the basis of his observations, and by an immanent critique of classical political economy, Owenite Socialism, and to a lesser extent, Chartism, Marx specified his theory of social development and social revolution. In 1870 – in the midst of a growing reliance on arbitration and conciliation measures to settle disputes, twenty years after the disastrous failure of Chartism … Marx saw the English working class standing on the threshold of revolution … a working-class revolution (believed to) be a necessary revolution, one necessarily arising out of the contradictions internally generated by capitalism. Since capitalism had developed most fully in England, Marx expected that the irreducible structural antagonisms between capital and labor which accompanied this development would ultimately ignite class struggle. But class struggle did not erupt in England’ (Hearn, 1978, p.246).

For Francis Hearn, Marx’s inaccurate predictions had resulted from his analysis never straying from a ‘focus on the appropriation of surplus value. Thus, (his) critique of political economy sustained (Marx’s) hope for a revolutionary working class in England; but this hope came at the expense of inaccurate analysis’ (Hearn, 1978, p.259). Hearn perceived Marx’s ‘dialectic (to be) too narrowly defined: it must (therefore) be expanded to include a critique of the instrumentalization of culture as a well as a critique of political economy; it must be capable of examining cultural domination as well as economic and political domination’ (Hearn, 1978, p.259). As a result focus was directed towards developing an understanding, from a Marxist perspective, of the concepts of economic, political and cultural domination, and how such forms of domination, if at all, where imposed, and/or represented by the actions of government and the manufacturing class over the cotton workers from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century and the FA and the FL over the professional players from 1883 to 1963. Had such domination hindered the advancement of a working-class revolution in either industry that would have brought about, sooner rather than later, ‘a freer and happier mode of human existence’ (Marcuse, 1991, P.XII)?

In order to achieve this a thorough examination of ‘critical theory18 … (a concept) most forcefully characterised by Herbert Marcuse’s19 category a one-dimensional society’ (Hearn, 1978, p.6) as described in his book, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society was needed. For Marcuse a one-dimensional society was expressive of only those needs and aspirations that were desired by the establishment (Hearn, 1978, p.69). This feat could be achieved through the:

‘suppression of culture and consciousness and of the capacity for critical transcendence which they sustain. One-dimensional society, then, rests on a rationalization of technique, which permits the expression of only those needs and aspirations, which can be satisfied by the established arrangements. Under these circumstances, fundamental emancipatory social change is blocked. By suggesting the constriction of culture and consciousness to the constraints of instrumental reason, affords the beginnings of an explanation of the social cohesion of advanced industrial society and, more specifically, of the integration of working class into its structures’ (Hearn, 1978, p.7).

Marcuse interpreted one-dimensional thought as that which conformed:

‘to existing thought and behavior and lacking a critical dimension of potentialities that transcend the existing society. The adjective, one-dimensional, describes practices that conform to pre-existing structures, norms, and behavior, in contrast to multi-dimensional (two-dimensional) discourse, which focuses on possibilities that transcend the established state of affairs. In the one- dimensional society, the subject is assimilated into the object and follows the dictates of external, objective norms and structures, thus losing the ability to discover more liberating possibilities and to engage in transformative practice to realize them. One-dimensional man has lost, or is losing, individuality, freedom and the ability to dissent and to control one’s own destiny. One-dimensional man does not know its true needs because its needs are not its own – they are

18 Critical theory is a radical emancipatory form of Marxian theory that sought to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them. 19 Herbert Marcuse was a neo-Marxist philosopher, social theorist and political activist. His book One- dimensional man was described as ‘one of the most important books of the 1960s. First published in 1964, it was immediately recognized as a significant critical diagnosis of the present age and was soon taken up by the emergent New Left as a damning indictment of contemporary Western societies, capitalist and communist. Conceived and written in the 1950s and early 1960s, the book reflects the shifting conformity of the era and provides a powerful critique of new modes of domination and social control. Yet is also expresses the hopes of a radical philosopher that human freedom and happiness could be greatly expanded beyond the one-dimensional thought and behavior prevalent in the established society’ (Marcuse, 1991, p.XI).

administered, superimposed, and heteronomous; it is not able to resist domination, nor to act autonomously, for it identifies with public behavior and imitates and submits to the powers that be. Lacking the power of authentic self- activity, one-dimensional man submits to increasingly total domination.

The cognitive costs include the loss of an ability to perceive another dimension of possibilities that transcend the one-dimensional thought and society. One- dimensional thought is not able to make theses distinctions and thus submits to the power of existing society, deriving its view of the world and mode of behavior from existing practices and modes of thought. Alienated from the powers of being-a-self, one-dimensional man thus becomes an object of administration and conformity. (The result is) the closing-off, or atrophying, of the very possibilities of radical social change and human emancipation … a situation in which there are no revolutionary classes or groups to militate for radical social change and in which individuals are integrated into the existing society, content with their lot and unable to perceive possibilities for a happier and freer life’ (Marcuse, 1964, p.xxvii-xxix).

During the early nineteenth century Hearn believed that the introduction of the ‘Reform Act of 1832 (had) formally sanctioned (an) alliance between the middle class (manufacturing class) and the landed aristocracy (government)’ (Hearn, 1978, p.137). Such an act represented the ‘two groups … shared opposition to the workers and their associations’ (Hearn, 1978, p.137). The purpose of this alliance was to further their needs and aspirations, i.e. the advancement of industrial capitalism, through further economic and productive expansion. However, for this to be achieved a ‘separation of the economy from social obligations – in short a denial of social responsibility’ (Hearn, 1978, p.69) was required. For Jeremy Shapiro20 such social responsibility had previously been a central tenet of what he deemed a ‘two-dimensional pre-industrial capitalist society – a politicised society (i.e. eighteenth century England) wherein questions of instrumental action, such as the allocation of natural resources and labor, the distribution of products, and the organization of work, (were all) expressive of underlying social obligations and relationships’ (Hearn, 1978, p.20). The government’s decision to introduce the 1832 Reform Act, a form of political domination, in conjunction with the 1834 New Poor Law, a form of economic domination (Hearn, 1978, p.67) would

20 Jeremy Shapiro is an academic who works in the area of critical social theory with emphasis on the social and cultural effects of information technology and systems, social change, and the aesthetics of music.

represent English society’s transition from a two-dimensional pre-industrial capitalist society to a one-dimensional industrial capitalist society.

While workers in the cotton industry would respond to these events:

‘with a series of protest activities … opposition (would be) safely contained by 1834. While many working-class organizations persisted, i.e. the Preston Chartists, their aims and activities over the next several years were minimal and isolated. (In conjunction with the) extension of measures, i.e. worker discipline,21 (a form of cultural domination), intended to suppress the institutions and associations – in short, the culture of the working class … the government and the (manufacturing class were able to) stamp out the recreation and ceremony so important to working-class communities. When combined with such legislation as the New Poor Law of 1834 … these efforts seriously damaged the cultural framework of England’s working class’ (Hearn, 1978, p.137).

Thus, by the:

‘end of 1860 the working class threat to industrial capitalism in England had been substantially weakened. The virulent opposition toward the bourgeoisie and the government, and the deep-rooted repudiation of the society generated by industrial capitalism, which characterized the working-class communities throughout most of the first half of the nineteenth century, had given way to an acceptance of the established order. (By) the third quarter of the nineteenth century the English working class had been circumscribed by the values, institutions, and structures of industrial capitalist society’ (Hearn, 1978, p.231).

In contrast to the storied history of industrial Britain from the mid-eighteenth to the mid- nineteenth century the history of English football from 1883 to 1963 would be

21 ‘Worker discipline constituted a crucial problem for the success of the factory system. The factory system required workers capable of performing regular, methodical, and routine tasks. Accordingly methods of discipline were directed toward the adaptation of workers to the dynamics of the factory system. The capitalist had at his disposal three basic methods of imposing work discipline: deterrents, wage incentives, and the formation of a new work ethos. Until the first decades of the nineteenth century, workers continued to regulate their activity in accordance with traditional holidays, fairs, and days of religious celebration. Irregular attendance was therefore commonplace. By the fourth decade of the century, the program of worker discipline initiated by the capitalists had combined with the suppression of workers’ organizations, culture and leisure activities to successfully impose the require work habits’ (Hearn, 1978, pp.76-79).

compared. Specific focus would be on identifying those acts committed by the FA and the FL that could be characterised as being for the purpose of imposing economic, political and cultural domination over the professional players. As a consequence, further research would identify the FA’s attempt, from 1883 to 1885, to eradicate professionalism through the meting out of suspensions to those found to be professionals, their implementation of the maximum wage from 1900 to 1961, and the introduction of the retain-and-transfer system by the FL in 1893 as methods of imposing of economic domination. In addition to the imposition of economic domination the inability of the professional players’ and their Union representatives to have a say or even to vote against the continued existence of the retain-and-transfer system and the maximum wage from 1893 to 1961 would be representative of political domination (Harding, 1991, p.42). While the FA’s attempts, for example, to eradicate the working- class culture of alcohol consumption in public houses and the receipt of illicit payments above and beyond the maximum wage would be identified as methods with which the FA had sort to impose cultural domination over the professional players.

Further analysis of the use of domination in English football would enable three questions to be posed. First, could these examples of economic, political, and cultural domination imposed upon the professional players by the FA and the FL be viewed as analogous to those forms of domination imposed upon cotton workers by the government and the manufacturing class? Secondly, could the inability of the professional players and their Union representatives to overcome the FA and the FL’s economic, political, and cultural domination, from 1893 to 1963, be representative of an acceptance of the established order thus confirming English football as a one- dimensional industrial capitalist society during this period? Thirdly, while the working- class threat to industrial capitalism had been substantially weakened by 1860 with a working-class revolution never forthcoming, the professional players and their Union representatives had, post-1961, managed to overcome the economic, political, and cultural of the FA and the FL by coercing them into removing the maximum wage and the retain-and-transfer system. This feat would confirm English football as a two- dimensional ‘politicized society where in questions of instrumental action, such as the … organization of work (were now) expressive of underlying social obligations and relationships’ (Hearn, 1978, p.20). Could such a feat be identified as a being a product of class struggle and the realisation of a working-class revolution in English football – an achievement previously predicted by Marx, but never fully realised by the working class in England in 1870?

In addition to obtaining a greater understanding as to why, for example, the FA sort to impose economic, political, and cultural domination, i.e. to repeatedly subjugate the professional player resulting from to an ever enduring, historical distain for their presence in the English game, it was necessary to understand from a theoretical perspective how these organisations had been able, for such a long period of time, to impose such domination. For critical theorists including, Herbert Marcuse, Antonio Gramsci,22 and Jürgen Habermas23 they believed that ideology was the ‘principle obstacle to human liberation as it prevented human beings from being freed from the circumstances that enslaved them’ (Geuss, 1981). Ideology, in this sense of the word, was a tool in the hands of the established order used to sustain relations of domination – ‘functional false beliefs, which, not least because they are so widespread, served to shore up certain social institutions and the relations of domination they support’ (Finlayson, 2005, p.11). The goal therefore of critical theory was not ‘just to determine what was wrong with contemporary society … but (to identify) progressive aspects and tendencies within it, to help transform (that) society for the better’ (Finlayson, 2005, p.4). As a result of this assertion research was directed towards understanding the concept of ideology from the varying theoretical perspectives offered by (neo) Marxism and then to identify those theories that could best explain how the established order, in the both the cotton and football industry, had been able to use ideology as a means to sustain relations of domination and those theories that could explain how such domination had been overcome by the cotton workers and the professional players in their respective industries.

As a consequence, the following theoretical perspectives were chosen to explain how the cotton workers and the professional players, if at all, were able to overcome the economic, political, and cultural domination of the established order in their respective industries: First, the theory of natural law ideology (Hearn, 1978, pp.39-42), developed during the eighteenth century, was chosen to highlight the socio-economic landscape of English society, pre-industrial capitalism, and whether the attainment of such a society, post-industrial capitalism, was a realistic possibility in either industry. In its:

‘critical form (natural law ideology) anticipated a more progressively emancipated form of social organization. First, it contained the evaluative principles, which were used to critically scrutinize the present order. Second, it

22 Antonio Gramsci was a radical Italian Marxist theorist and activist. 23 Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory. He is perhaps best known for his theories on communicative rationality and the public sphere.

offered alternatives to the existing arrangements by identifying the tendencies contained in and suppressed by these arrangements. And, thirdly, the anticipatory content provided transcendental criteria for social action’ (Hearn, 1978, p.63).

Secondly, Antonio Gramsci’s theory of ideological hegemony (Gramsci 1985, p.164) was chosen to explain, in practical terms, how such a two-dimensional society characterised by natural law ideology could be achieved in either the football or cotton industry and, in particular, by those members of the working class community he dubbed as organic intellectuals. Gramsci thought that these intellectuals were a product of an emerging social class in society whose responsibility it was to ‘lend that class some homogenous self-consciousness in the cultural, political and economic fields. The function of the organic intellectual (was) to forge links between theory and ideology, (thus) creating a two-way passage between political analysis and popular experience’ (Eagleton, 2007, p.120). For Gramsci:

‘the consciousness of subordinated groups in society was typically fissured and uneven. Two conflicting conceptions of the world usually (existed) the one drawn from the official notions of the rulers, the other derived from an oppressed people’s practical experience of social reality. One aim of revolutionary practice, then, must be to elaborate and make explicit the potentially creative principles implicit in the practical understanding the of oppressed – to raise these otherwise inchoate, ambiguous elements of its experience to the status of a coherent philosophy or world-view’ (Eagleton, 2007, p.118).

Thirdly, Mannheim’s theory of the sociology of knowledge (Mannheim, 1954) was chosen, for example, to explain the form and purpose, in ideological terms, of the FL’s retain-and-transfer system and the government’s 1834 New Poor Law, i.e. ‘conscious distortions, calculated lies (designed) to manipulate deliberately those under its control’ (Freeden, 2003, pp.13-15). Mannheim termed this form of ideology as the particular conception of ideology. However, for Mannheim there was another category of ideology to which he attributed the label of the total conception of ideology, or a ‘Weltanschauung, an all-encompassing view of the world adopted by a given group, always reflecting the general ideas and thought-systems of an historical epoch’ (Freeden, 2003, p.14).

For Mannheim this Weltanschauung could be achieved by an intelligentsia, a ‘group whose special task it (was) to provide … an increasingly independent, non-subjective, interpretation of the world (a reality that would allow for the creation) of a unified sociology of knowledge (to occur and) a reversion to the possibility of social truths’ (Freeden, 2003, pp.14-15). Mannheim believed that with:

‘the emergence of the general formulation of the total concept of ideology, the simple theory of ideology develops into the sociology of knowledge. What was once the intellectual armament of a party is transformed into a method of research in social and intellectual history generally. To begin with, a given social group discovers the situational determination of its opponents’ ideas. Subsequently the recognition of this fact is elaborated into an all-inclusive principle according to which the thought of every group is seen as arising out of its life conditions’ (Mannheim, 1954, pp.68-69).

The purpose of applying Mannheim’s theory of the sociology of knowledge to this thesis was to see if such an intelligentsia had existed in either the cotton or the football industry, i.e. Richard Marsden/Jimmy Hill and, whether or not, such a Weltanschauung had ever been fully realised, i.e. the 1819 Factory Act/the removal of the maximum wage in 1961.

Fourthly and finally, Habermas’ concept of the bourgeois public sphere as illustrated in his book The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society (Habermas, 1991) was applied to this thesis to see if such a public sphere, i.e. a physical space ‘such as coffee houses … salons and … literary journals, in which citizens could enter into free public discussion (Finlayson, 2005, p.10) had been created in either the cotton industry by, for example, the Preston Chartists during the mid-nineteenth century or in the football industry by the AFPU in the late nineteenth century. For Habermas these physical spaces ‘were relatively independent of the economic and political systems (and thus they enabled) a shared culture (to develop) that, among other things, helped the participants to discover and to express their needs and interests to form a conception of the common good’ (Finlayson, 2005, p.10).

For Habermas the public sphere was a:

‘sphere of private people coming together as a public (engaging in) debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly

relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor .The principle of control that the … public opposed to … was intended to change domination as such. A public sphere that functioned in the political realm arose first in Great Britain at the turn of the eighteenth century. Forces endeavouring to influence the decisions of state authority appealed to the critical public in order to legitimate demands before this new forum’ (Habermas, 1991, pp.27-28).

If such public spheres had been established in either industry, had such an occurrence, enabled public opinion ‘to function as a check on the legitimacy of the powers of (the government or the FL by deciding) whether laws and policies (such as the 1832 Reform Act or the 1893 retain-and-transfer system) were in the common good’ (Finlayson, 2005, pp.10-11)?

In conjunction with those theories that sort to aid in developing an understanding as to whether the cotton workers or the professional players had been able to overcome the domination imposed upon them this thesis would seek to explain, from a Marxist perspective, how the established order in both industries had sort to impose such domination. First, Marx and Engels’ theory of ideology (Marx and Engels, 2011) would, for example, be used to explain how the FA’s maximum wage had been a physical manifestation of an ideology or ‘socially necessary illusion employed to exercise control and domination (over the professional players) – an instrument (designed) … to manufacture history according to their interests … (to forge the) myth of a unified political community’ (Freeden, 2003, p.6) in English football.

Secondly, Habermas’ critical theory as expounded in The structural transformation of the public sphere, known as the criticism of ideology or ideology criticism, would be used to explain how, for example, in 1901 the FL had succeeded in breaking up the public sphere created for the professional players by the AFPU in 1898 – a situation that would prevent the latter from proselytizing about the illegitimacy of the retain-and- transfer system. Accordingly the FL’s retain-and-transfer system would be viewed in accordance with Habermas’ definition of ideology, i.e. a false idea or belief ‘that society somehow manages to induce people to hold. Ideology in this sense can … make an institution that in fact serves the interests of a narrow class of people to appear to serve the interests of everyone’ (Finlayson, 2005, p.11). Ultimately, the FL would achieve their goal by countering the AFPU’s manipulation of public opinion through the publication of articles in the Lancashire Daily Post concerned with the grave injustices of the retain-and-transfer system (Harding, 1991, p.18) with antithetical publications

printed in the Athletic News, ‘the League’s mouthpiece and most influential sporting paper’ (Harding, 1991, p.30). As a result, public opinion in English football would gradually lose its ‘critical function (and) instead of fostering the formation of rational opinion and reliable beliefs … the public sphere in (English football would become) an arena in which public opinion could be stage-managed and manipulated. Instead of promoting freedom and human flourishing (in English football the FL) would actually begin to stifle it’ (Finlayson, 2005, p.13).

And, thirdly and finally, John B. Thompson’s24 critical conception of ideology (Thompson, 1984) would be used to explain the physical manifestation of the FA’s anti- professional ideology, from 1883 to 1885, and in particular their handing out of suspensions to professional players found to have violated rule 15 (Young, 1969, p.117), i.e. that:

‘any member of a club receiving remuneration or consideration of any sort above his actual expenses, and any wages actually lost by an such player taking part in either Cup, Inter-Association, or International contests at any club employing such player should be excluded from this Association’ (Sanders, 2009, p.116).

For Thompson the purpose of imposing such an ideology was to legitimate the:

‘power of a dominant social group or class … (in order) to sustain relations of domination.’ (The) process of legitimation … involved at least six different strategies. A dominant power may legitimate itself by promoting beliefs and values congenial to it; naturalizing and universalizing such beliefs so as to render them as self-evident and apparently inevitable; denigrating ideas which might challenge it; excluding rival forms of thought, perhaps by some unspoken but systematic logic; and obscuring social reality in ways convenient to itself. Such mystification, as it is commonly known, frequently takes the form of masking or suppressing social conflicts’ (Eagleton, 2007, p.6).

The FA would attempt this feat by promoting the notion that English football had been created for the purpose ‘of improving the mental and physical health of public school

24 John B. Thompson is a British sociologist from the University of Cambridge whose academic interests, among others, include contemporary social and political theory.

boys’ (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p.3), naturalizing the belief that ‘amateur players were … superior to their professional brothers’ (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p.4), universalizing the idea that ‘rough and unfair play, a disregard of the rules … and abuse of the umpires and referees (were all linked) to the presence … of paid professional players’ (Sanders, 2009, pp.118-119), denigrating the retort that ‘pro footballers were not hired footpads or kicking ruffians (Harding and Taylor, 2009, p.5), and excluding the rejoinder that professionalism was in ‘no way injurious to the best intentions of the game’ (Young, 1969, p.118).

If successful then the FA as ‘the game’s ruling body … men drawn from the upper echelons of British society … men of prejudice … heirs to the doctrine of leadership and so law-givers by at least semi-divine right’ (Young, 1969, p.117) would be able to obscure social reality in a manner that would be convenient to itself. The FA, however, would not be successful in this endeavour. As a consequence they would not only fail to legitimate themselves as the dominant social group in English football but also to sustain relations of domination – an outcome that had been reached due to their inability to eradicate professionalism and their subsequent decision, at the behest of William Sudell, Chairman of Preston North End, to legalise it in 1885.

In conclusion, the decision to situate the theory of ideology within the context of critical theory was based on Thompson’s assertion that by doing so:

‘we can illuminate some of the misleading assumptions which have often been associated with the notion of ideology. For it has often been assumed that ideology operates like a sort of social cement, binding the members of a society together by providing them with collectively shared values and norms. (However), the stability of our societies may depend, not so much upon a consensus concerning particular values and norms, but upon a lack of consensus at the very point where oppositional attitudes could be translated into political. Rather, it is to redirect this theory away from the search for collectively shared values and towards the study of the complex ways in which meaning is mobilized for the maintenance of relations of domination’ (Thompson, 1984, p.5).

Thompson’s assertion would prove to be the final instalment in this thesis’ research methods – the ‘tools, techniques or processes that we use in our research … a specific approach taken’ (Smith, 2014, p.4), i.e. the theory of ideology, critical (social) theory, a revised form of Marx’s theory of social development and social revolution, etc. How

these methods were to be implemented within this thesis would be informed by the methodological framework/research methodology of this thesis, i.e. ‘the principles that guide our research practices … the overall approach taken’ (Smith, 2014, pp.11-13), i.e. the placement of the theory of ideology within the context of social theory, the cotton industry as a comparator, etc. In choosing the aforementioned research methods and methodology this thesis’ overarching research questions were formed – Can Marxist theory offer an explanation for the enduring struggle over professionalism in English football between the FA, the FL, and the professional players and their Union representatives, from 1883 to 1963? And did the abolition of the maximum wage and retain-and-transfer system, post-1961, represent the professional players’ ability to overcome the economic, political and cultural domination of the FA and the FL and the realisation of a working-class revolution in English football?

Introduction

This thesis was originally intent on understanding and explaining the history of criminal acts25 committed by football players in English football from 1863 to 2015 in order to accredit, if possible, blame or responsibility to specific groups or individuals operating across the full spectrum of professions within the game. However, after some preliminary research it became apparent that there was already an abundance of literature surrounding the nature of this subject (Inglis, 1985). Yet the offering of a more epistemological explanation as to why these acts had been committed was not so readily available. As a result the purpose of the thesis quickly changed into an attempt to identify, whether or not, specific institutional cultures, philosophies or ideologies held by influential organisations involved in the governance of English football could be, in some way, causally or directly responsible for influencing football players to commit criminal acts.

My research showed that these institutional cultures had been passed down from generation to generation therefore leading me to pose the question; if modern-day football were able to isolate and/or eradicate these cultural idiosyncrasies and ideological predilections held by these organisations, with the origin/influence behind these criminal acts being eliminated, would the need for football players to commit such acts be negated?

The general consensus provided by the available literature suggested that these acts were merely a symptom of an enduring struggle that existed between those who governed English football, the FA, and the FL and those whom they governed, the professional players. The literature appeared to correlate low levels of criminal behaviour committed by professional players (Harding and Taylor, 2009, p.22) with periods of time when the principles and actions of the FA were deemed to be less domineering, i.e. the FA’s reluctant legalisation of professionalism in 1885 – from 1885 to 1888 professionalism was a legal, unrestricted activity (Harding, 2009, p.13). Conversely, when the principles and actions of the FA and the FL were deemed to be highly domineering, i.e. 1883 to 1885 English football was characterised by the FA’s decision to hand out of suspensions to those football players found to be professionals; 1893 to 1961 English football characterised by the introduction in 1893 of the FL’s retain-and-transfer system, a

25 Criminal acts, include: illegal wages, illegal bonuses, illegal presents to players, employment in bogus jobs, etc. (Inglis, 1985, p.10).

restriction on the professional players’ freedom of contract/movement, and the introduction in 1900 of the FA’s maximum wage, levels of criminal behaviour committed by professional players were deemed to have increased dramatically, i.e. a proliferation in match-fixing (Inglis, 1985, p.31).

It is important to note that from 1883 to 1963 the FA and FL were united in their attempts to impose their domination over the professional players, however, their purposes for doing so were diametrically opposed. For example, the FA’s decision to suspend professional players from playing football from 1883 to 1885 and the imposition of their maximum wage from 1900 to 1961 were rooted in an anti-capitalist ideal that claimed ‘football would always be sport, never a business’ (Harding, 2009, p.14), and never a ‘commercialised form of mass entertainment’ (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p.3). Conversely, William McGregor, founder of the FL in 1888, believed that the formation of the League would enable English football as a commercial venture to thrive as football clubs would embark upon an ‘adventure of earning massive amounts of money’ (Harding, 1971, p.4). Their introduction of the retain-and-transfer system in 1893 would enable League clubs to ‘control the raw material of the game – the player’ (Harding, 1971, p.5), while acting as a mechanism with which club directorates could line their own pockets at the expense of the players. Consequently, from 1893 ‘players in the Football League (would) not (be) free to negotiate a new contract on anything like equal terms with their employees … (with) the Football League (having) abolished the free market where players’ wages were concerned’ (Harding, 1971, p.5).

For me, this highly superficial observation only served to illustrate the manifestly obvious. I felt that what was needed was the presentation of a more profound theoretical explanation as to why the FA, the FL, and the professional players had behaved in such a manner. This perspective was not debated in any of the literature I had researched to date. After further research, much deliberation, and time, the focus of my thesis shifted once again. I began, by a long and broad research of ideological theory, to seek an explanation of the various forms, purpose and ability through which the FA and the FL were able to dominate and control professional players and the degree to which they had been able to sufficiently respond to this ideological domination.

It soon became clear to me that the term ideology had a variety of meanings not all of which appeared, at least on the surface, to be compatible or even relevant to the actions of the FA and the FL in English football. As a consequence it became necessary for me to identify those theories that were of relevance and those that were not. My research

had already led me to conclude that the FA’s maximum wage and the FL’s retain-and- transfer system were manifestations of anti-professional ideologies introduced by these organisations in order to impose domination over the professional players. Within this context the response of the professional players rather than be considered as acts of criminality would be thought of in less pejorative terms, as acts of defiance, i.e. ‘open or bold resistance to authority, opposition, or power’ (McLeod (managing ed.), 1990, p.255). In this sense the professional players were committing acts of defiance in direct response to the FA and FL’s attempts at securing ideological domination in English football.

My research would be directed towards those theories that could explain the initial manifestation of the FA’s anti-professional ideology during the first period of English football, which I identified as being between from 1883 to 1885, prior to the foundation of the FL in 1888. I quickly established that the most pertinent theory of ideology to explain the form and purpose of the FA’s anti-professional ideology during this particular period would state that the purpose of ideology was to legitimate the:

‘power of a dominant social group or class. ‘To study ideology’, writes John B. Thompson, ‘… is to study the ways in which meaning (or signification) serves to sustain relations of domination.’ This is probably the single most widely accepted definition of ideology; and the process of legitimation would seem to involve at least six different strategies. A dominant power may legitimate itself by promoting beliefs and values congenial to it, naturalizing and universalizing such beliefs so as to render them as self-evident and apparently inevitable; denigrating ideas which might challenge it; excluding rival forms of thought, perhaps by some unspoken but systematic logic; and obscuring social reality in ways convenient to itself. Such ‘mystification’, as it is commonly known, frequently takes the form of masking or suppressing social conflicts, from which arises the conception of ideology as an imaginary resolution of real contradictions’ (Eagleton, 2007, p.6).

When applying this theory of ideology to English football from 1883 to 1885 I could postulate, for example, that the FA’s anti-professional ideology during this period, based on the belief that English football was a game solely for the amateur gentleman (Sanders, 2009, p.116), was for the purpose of legitimating themselves as the dominant social class/power in English football through the promotion of their anti-professional ideology as a method with which to exclude the professional players’ rival form of thought, namely their right to earn an unabashed and unrestricted living from football. In

response to the FA’s anti-professional ideology the professional players, in conjunction with their club chairmen, would actively seek to defy the FA through the repeated and unabated receipt and payment of illicit inducements to play football, professionally. The FA, as a consequence, had failed to impose their anti-professional ideology over the professional players and thus had been unable to legitimate themselves as the dominant social group in English football.

This theory of ideology would provide a platform from which alternate theories of ideology could be applied in order to explain, for example, how the FA’s aforementioned failure had lead them to legalise professionalism in 1885 (Young, 1968, p.121). In this instance the form and purpose of the FA’s dominant form of ideology and the subsequent ability of the professional players to coerce them into making this decision could, for example, be explained by neo-Marxist Antonio Gramsci’s theory of Ideological Hegemony, which stated that ‘the establishment of hegemony (would involve) the coordination of different interests and their ideological expression, so that an all-embracing group, possibly society as a whole, was engaged’ (Freeden, 2003, p.20). The legalisation of professionalism would therefore represent a coordinating of interests, between the FA and the professional players, in English football.

I began to research theories of ideology to see if any could explain the various forms and purposes with which the FA and the FL were able to secure ideological domination in English football through the imposing of their anti-professional ideologies and the subsequent ability of the professional players to defy these attempts. Quite quickly the literature began to offer insights into how further research was conducted and focused. It became apparent (at least to me) that those perspectives and theories put forward by the neo-Marxist school of thought, when applied to English football, could provide some answers to the questions I was seeking to answer. For the purposes of my research I chose to focus on Karl Mannheim’s theory of the sociology of knowledge (Freeman, 2003, p.12) to explain the introduction of the FL’s retain-and-transfer system in 1893, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels theory of Ideology (Freeman, 2003, p.6), to explain the introduction of the FA’s maximum wage in 1900, and Jürgen Habermas’ theory of Immanent Criticism also known as the Criticism of Ideology (Finlayson, 2005, p.10) to explain how the FA, from 1900 to 1961, and the FL, from 1893 to 1963, had been able to impose their anti-professional ideologies over the professional players (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p.14).

Accordingly, I took the decision to focus on the period of time from 1883 when the FA first attempted to impose its anti-professional ideology over the professional players to 1963 when the FL’s retain-and-transfer system would finally be abolished at the behest of the professional players and their Union representation, the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA). The rationale behind applying these particular theories of ideology, was not only due to the ease with which they could succinctly convey, in a theoretical sense, what had occurred in English football but also because the contrast between these (neo) Marxist theories of ideology would act as a metaphor for the contrasting nature of the FA and the FL’s attempts at securing ideological domination over the professional players from 1883 to 1963. As a consequence the application of these competing neo- Marxist/Marxist theories of ideology would not only illustrate how the theory of ideology itself had evolved over time but also how this theoretical evolution had been imitated and indeed realised in the real-world context of English football. While Marx and Engels’ theory of ideology was of great importance to this thesis, the application of one of their most important observations, used to explain the nature of English football as a society post-1893 (after the introduction of the maximum wage and retain-and- transfer system) would prove to be of equal, if not, greater importance, i.e.:

‘the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles … the modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones’ (Marx and Engels, 1967, pp.79-80).

During the mid-nineteenth century the aristocracy were to be ‘replaced by the capitalists (also known as the bourgeoisie). These were the people who owned businesses with the goal of earning a profit, and the working class were replaced by the proletariat, the people who labored for wages’ (Marx and Engels, 1967, p.79). This concept of a modern bourgeois society would provide an accurate depiction of the type of society that would start to take shape in English football after the legalisation of professionalism in 1885 and the formation of the FL in 1888. Within this framework, it would have appeared on the surface, that the arrival of the FL (bourgeoisie) in 1888 was to have posed a serious threat to the FA’s (aristocracy) position of dominance in English football. I will suggest, however, that rather than attempt to overthrow and supersede the FA, the FL sought to work in harmony with the Association as they embarked upon a joint campaign that sought to impose a combination of ideological domination over the professional players (proletariat).

The establishment of ‘new classes’ in English football, post-1888, would be represented by the professional players who would transition from being working class to being proletarian. The introduction of ‘new conditions of oppression’ represented, pre-1885, by the handing out of suspensions to illegal professionals by the FA, to the introduction of the maximum wage in 1900 by the FA and FL’s the retain-and-transfer system in 1893. These ‘new conditions of oppression’ would instigate ‘new forms of struggle in place of the old ones’ for the professional players, i.e. the receipt of illicit inducements to play football, pre-1885, designed to subvert the illegality of professionalism, to the receipt of illegal wages and bonuses (Inglis, 1985, p.10), post-1900, designed to subvert the maximum wage and the retain-and-transfer system. These features of a modern bourgeois society as described by Marx (Marx and Engels, 1985, p.79) would characterise English football as a society during this particular period. In addition:

‘Marx believed that this (capitalist) system (inherent to a modern bourgeois society) was inherently unfair. Under capitalism, Marx thought that the workers would become poorer and poorer and experience alienation. Alienation is seen as the workers becoming more distanced from, or isolated from, their work, resulting in a feeling of powerlessness. To replace this alienation and extreme social class structure, Marx believed that capitalism had to end and be replaced by a socialist system that would make all men equal and whereby everyone in society would have their needs met. In his major work with Fredrick Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Marx stated, 'the proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.' Thus, Marx had called for a workers' revolution where the proletarians would rise up against the bourgeoisie, overthrowing capitalism. To Marx's despair, though, such revolutions occurred in various countries such as Russia and China, but did not occur in the more industrialized nations of the time, like Britain and Germany’ (Johnson, 2014).

Marx was to state that the:

‘English working class (were) standing on the threshold of revolution … a necessary revolution, one necessarily arising out of the contradictions internally generated by the dynamics of capitalism. Since capitalism had developed most fully in England, Marx expected that the irreducible structural antagonisms between capital and labor which accompanied this development would ultimately ignite class struggle. But class struggle did not erupt in England’ (Hearn, 1978, pp.245-246).

These assertions by Marx would come to represent his theory of societal development and social revolution (social conflict theory), which he would develop in 1870 in order to explain the plight of the proletariat at that time in British society (Hearn, 1978, p.244). While his desire and indeed predictions for a workers’ revolution may not have been realised (Hearn, 1978, p.245) in England, this thesis seeks to test and apply them to English football. My purpose is to identify, whether or not, such a revolution did occur in English football, post-1961, when the professional players and their Union representatives, the PFA, successfully, fought for the removal of the maximum wage in 1961 and the retain-and-transfer system in 1963 (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p.41) and, whether or not, such ‘alienation’ and ‘extreme social class stricture’, deemed inherent to the capitalist system, and therefore to English football, from 1900 to 1963, had been replaced by a more socialist (classless) system, free from domination (ideological), and founded on the basis of equality and democracy.

While Marx’s theory of societal development and social revolution may have inaccurately predicted a working-class revolution in England during the late-nineteenth century, by applying it to English football this thesis found its hypothesis. Could Marx’s theory of societal development and social revolution provide an explanation for how and why the professional players in English football were able to defy the ideological domination of the FA and the FL, represented through the removal of the maximum wage (1961) and the retain-and-transfer system (1963), and whether or not, this defiance could be described as a working-class revolution (at least in this industry)? Could this be an example of a ‘revolution’ resulting from the irreducible structural antagonisms between capital (maximum wage and retain-and-transfer system) and labour (professional players) in English football? It is my belief, following much research, that this application and association has not been undertaken before in academic or literary circles. My hope is that this thesis will not only further our knowledge of English football but also our understanding of Marxist theory and its relevance to contemporary society.

I will show that the struggle in English football from 1883 to 1963 between those who governed, the FA – aristocrats, the FL – bourgeoisie (Harding, 1971, p.1), and those whom they governed, the professional players – working-class/proletariat (Young, 1968, p.114), was not only a struggle between opposing groups but also a struggle between opposing classes operating within the society of English football. A struggle that was to endure as a result of the diametrically opposed ideologies each class held about the presence and/or purpose of professional players. In order to fully understand and

appreciate this class struggle and the detrimental effect it would have on of English football, part of my focus, would be directed towards identifying the root of the FA’s anti-professional ideology from 1863 and the source of the professional player’s desire and/or need to subvert it. My research would show that the cause of the FA’s merciless distain for professionalism (McLeod, 1990), the most identifiable and defining characteristic of the working-class/proletarian football player during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, was due to a desire to return English football to its original purpose and to those persons for whom it was created, i.e.:

‘to improve the mental and physical health of pubic schoolboys and, later, as a means of instilling concepts such as fair play, combination and camaraderie in those amateur gentlemen of the middle and upper classes. When soccer was subsequently appropriated by industrial entrepreneurs and turned into a commercialized form of entertainment, there was a struggle’ (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p.3).

Conversely, the working classes, from around the British Isles, would convene on English football for the purpose of earning a living as their ‘skill (was) not supported by ample private funds’ (Young, 1969, p.116):

‘Why they really came … is intelligible in economic terms. During the 1870s a serious decline in agricultural prosperity coincided with an industrial boom. The manufacturing industries in the North and the Midlands needed every man on whom hands could be laid. Expansion of communications also meant vacancies for labourers on the railways and in the docks. Such conditions encouraged immigration. The Irish, the Welsh, and the Scots poured into England, Enterprising football clubs saw in what way this form of brain-drain could be turned to their advantage ... there were inducements. There were under-cover subsides. There was even a tendency to take football seriously’ (Young, 1969, pp.116-117).

Thus, during the late nineteenth century, when working-class professional players were deemed by the FA to have totally misappropriated English football for the purposes of economic remuneration a struggle would begin in earnest. In 1884 the FA’s anti- professional ideology would manifest itself through the imposing of suspensions handed out those football players found to be engaging in professionalism. The purpose of which was to eliminate those persons from earning a living from English football, thus

curtailing their future participation in the game – a game that was never intended for them. However, the FA would not be successful in this endeavour and with the help of the chairmen of clandestine professional football clubs (Sanders, 2009, p.109) in 1885 working-class professional players would successfully petition for professionalism to be legalised (Young, 1968, p.121). While the proletariat in Britain during the mid- nineteenth century may have been a source of despair for Marx, the working-class professional players may have been a source of encouragement. The legalisation of professionalism in 1885 would mark a significant moment in the history of class struggle in English football. However, while the shackles that had accompanied illegal professionalism had been removed, a seismic advance for the working-class professional players at the time, progress would only be short-lived. As Marx identified, ‘under capitalism … the workers would become poorer and poorer and experience alienation’ (Marx and Engels, 1987, p.79). What followed would be far more enduring and far more painful for the professional players under the capitalist system that was to develop in English football post-1885.

After a brief period between 1885 to 1888, when professionalism was a legal, unrestricted activity, the FA and the FL from 1893 to 1961 would be able, with little resistance, to impose their ideological domination over the professional players. During this period the FA and the FL would use the capitalist system and its inherent structure (Hearn, 1978, p.247) as a method with which to achieve their objective. However, once the maximum wage and retain-and-transfer system, inherent to the capitalist system, had been removed, first, in 1961 with the maximum wage and, secondly, with the gradually disintegration of the retain-and-transfer system in 1963, at the behest of the PFA (Harding, 2009, p.145), the professional players’ ability to revolt against the ideological domination of the FA and the FL would confirm Marx’s predictions in 1870, as stated in his theory of societal development and social revolution, of the existence of a working- class revolution in English football.

If the ability of the professional players to overcome the ideological domination of the FA and the FL in 1963 could be explained by applying Karl Marx’s theory of societal development and social revolution then one of the challenges of this thesis has been to apply and consider theories of ideology, i.e. Gramsci’s theory of ideological hegemony, within the context of an alternate social theory that could best describe English football as a society from 1893 to 1963. After further research I would focuse on Herbert Marcuse’s critical theory, and specifically, his category of one-dimensionality, which would be used to explain this period.

While this decision was an organic and uninformed process according to John B. Thompson:

‘by situating the study of ideology within the context of social theory, we can illuminate some of the misleading assumptions which have often been associated with the notion of ideology. For it has often been assumed that ideology operates like a sort of social cement, binding the members of a society together by providing them with collectively shared values and norms … there is little evidence to suggest that certain values or beliefs are shared by all (or even most) members of modern industrial societies. On the contrary, it seems more likely that our societies, in so far as they are ‘stable’ social orders, are stabilized by virtue of the diversity of values and beliefs and the proliferation of division between individuals and groups. The stability of our societies may depend, not so much upon a consensus concerning particular values and norms, but upon a lack of consensus at the very point where oppositional attitudes could be translated into political. In emphasizing this point I concur with some of the arguments which have been developed by sociologists and social theorists in recent years. However, to endorse these arguments is not necessarily to abandon the theory of ideology. Rather, it is to redirect this theory away from the search for collectively shared values and towards the study of the complex ways in which meaning is mobilized for the maintenance of relations of domination’ (Thompson, 1984, p.5).

While the various methods with which the FA and the FL were to impose their ideological domination over the professional players would be explained with reference to the theories of ideology, as previously mentioned, of John B. Thompson, Antonio Gramsci, Karl Mannheim, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Jürgen Habermas, their overriding purpose is explained with reference to Herbert Marcuse’s category of one- dimensionality. Marcuse would state that:

‘the productive apparatus of technological civilization is totalitarian … in that it determines not only the socially needed occupations and skills, and attitudes, but also individual needs and aspirations. The opposition between individual and social needs is thus obliterated, and the immediate identification or unification of the individual within that society is the result. In this process, the inner

dimension of the mind in which opposition to [and negation of] the status quo can take root is whittled down. The contrast between the given and the possible is cancelled as society acquires the capacity to repulse all alternatives’ (Hearn, 1978, p.6).

Once perceived from this perspective the FA and the FL’s ideological domination can be described as being for the purpose of creating a one-dimensional society. According to Marcuse for a one-dimensional society to exist the established arrangement would need to suppress the:

‘culture and consciousness (of the working class) and of the capacity for critical transcendence which they sustain. One-dimensional society, then, rests on a rationalization of technique which permits the expression of only those needs and aspirations which can be satisfied by the established arrangements … Marcuse’s category of one-dimensionality, by suggesting the constriction of culture and consciousness to the constraints of instrumental reason, affords the beginnings of an explanation of the social cohesion of advanced industrial society and, more specifically, of the integration of the working class into its structures’ (Hearn, 1978, p.7).

From 1893 to 1963 the FA and the FL would be successful in their attempts to suppress ‘the (various forms of) culture and consciousness’ of the professional players and ‘the critical transcendence which they sustain (ed)’ thus confirming English football as a one-dimensional society. However, if this particular period of English football was to be framed in this manner then it would be necessary to identify how from 1885 to 1888 the professional players were able, albeit for only a short period, to successfully overcome the ideological domination of the FA. Consequently, this period of English football, where professionalism was to be deemed a legal, unrestricted activity will be explained with reference to Antonio Gramsci’s theory of ideological hegemony and Jeremy Shapiro’s category of a two-dimensional society. According to Shapiro a two- dimensional society was:

‘based on the external quality of the confrontation of man and nature, form and matter, and on the corresponding irreducibility of the lower level to the higher, of the individual to the universal. It is a politicized society wherein questions of instrumental action, such as the allocation of natural resources and labor, the distribution of products and the organization of work, are expressive of underlying

social obligations and relationships. These feature of two-dimensional society are found in traditional or preindustrial capitalist forms of societal organization’ (Hearn, 1978, p.20).

Through an active defiance of the FA’s ideological domination, the professional players had managed to create a two-dimensional ‘politicized’ society where the ‘organization of work’, i.e. the legality of professionalism, was to be ‘expressive of underlying social obligations and relationships’; social obligations and relationships that the FA were aggressively trying to repress. In this respect the professional players’ ability to overcome the ideological domination of the FA would also be viewed in the context of a variant of ideology called natural law ideology (doctrine of natural law) that was to have developed in eighteenth century Britain. This form of ideology:

‘embodied both a conforming and a critical reason, and thus was capable of legitimating both the prevailing arrangements and the opposition to these arrangements … in its critical form, natural law ideology anticipated a more progressively emancipated form of social organization. This anticipatory content served three general and related purposes. First, it contained the evaluative principles, which were used to critically scrutinize the present order. Second, it offered alternatives to the existing arrangements. And, thirdly, the anticipatory content provided transcendental criteria for social action’ (Hearn, 1978, pp.62- 63).

Consequently, this natural law ideology would provide an explanation as to how the professional players, through their acts of defiance, had been able to coerce the FA into surrendering their adherence to their anti-professional ideology. While the purpose of this thesis is to identity the professional players’ defiance of the FA and the FL’s ideological domination, in 1961 and 1963 respectively, as being tantamount to a working-class revolution in English football, an equally important focus is the society to which Marx’s theory of societal development and social revolution had been predicated upon, i.e. nineteenth century England and, in particular, an industry within that society whose industrial evolution was comparable to that of English football’s. Once such an industry was identified, it became important for me to study this industry’s origins, its economic development, its class relations, its societal configuration and, most importantly, why a working-class revolution did not take place. The purpose of this research was to use this industry as a barometer from which English football could be gauged in order to see how the professional players in English football had managed to

successfully overcome the ideological domination of the governing bodies of English football, thus instigating a working-class revolution, while the proletariat in this analogous industry had failed. Subsequently, after much deliberation the decision was taken to focus on the cotton industry from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century.

From the mid-eighteenth to the late eighteenth, during its pre-industrial capitalist period, the cotton industry would be characterised by its domestic production, a government who would strictly adhere to the natural law ideology of the eighteenth century, and its two-dimensionality. From the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth the cotton industry would transition from a pre-industrial capitalist period (two-dimensional society) to an industrial capitalist period (one-dimensional society), characterised by the mechanisation of the productive process, the introduction of the factory system, and the government’s reluctance to adhere to the natural law ideology of the eighteenth century. In response workers would attempt to create protective communities of their own in order to maintain certain social obligations. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the cotton industry would be identified as a one-dimensional industrial capitalist society whereby the government and the bourgeoisie (manufacturing class), like the FA and the FL had united in order to:

‘undermine the values and practices, the traditions of working-class culture. As a result) working-class social protest (became) aimless and disorganized. The working class community (subsequently lacked) viable and meaningful alternatives to the existing arrangements … (and) although protest continued, it (was) protest guided by objectives consistent with the established order’ (Hearn, 1978, p.232).

The decision to select the cotton industry for comparison was due, in no small part, to the many significant similarities that existed between these two industries. First, the persons who were to fight most vociferously for the legalisation of professionalism in English football thus transitioning it from a pre-industrial capitalist society to a two- dimensional industrial capitalist society were located in Lancashire and more specifically at football clubs, such as Preston North End, Blackburn Olympic and Blackburn Rovers. ‘Teams who were funded by local mill-owners’ (Sanders, 2009, p.89). All three of these football clubs were pioneers in the employment of illicit professional players from around the British Isles prior to its legalisation and it was their

repeated defiance of the FA’s anti-professional ideology that would allow for the introduction of industrial capitalism to English football (Young, 1968, p.116).

Conversely, the origins of both domestic and industrialised cotton production can be traced to Lancashire and in particular to cities such as Manchester, Middleton, Bury, Leigh, Bolton, and Preston (Hills, 1980, pp.12-13, 15). Secondly, the man who would fight most enthusiastically against the FA’s anti-professional ideology and whose actions were deemed to be responsible for the legalisation of professionalism was a Mr William Sudell, chairman of Preston North End, Lancashire.26 Sudell was a ‘cotton manufacturer and a man of substance and influence’ (Young, 1969, p.117) in the city of Preston and he desired ‘to create the world’s first unashamedly professional football team’ (Young, 1969, p.117). It was Sudell’s association to the cotton industry and his management of Goodair cotton mill (Sanders, 2009, p.109) that would focus my interest on the history of cotton production in England. Sudell asserted that in order to ‘attract the best players (to Preston), often Scots, he would have to promise a job so that they maintained their nominal amateur status’ (Vasili, 1998, p.56). He would accomplish this by employing professional players to work at the Goodair cotton mill as pseudo-cotton weavers and spinners. Thus, Sudell’s ability to employ professional players to play football for Preston North End would be predicated on his ability to employ these individuals to work in the manufacture of cotton – an ability that had enabled him to confront and undermine the FA’s anti-professional ideology. Thus the conclusion I would reach was that the industrial revolution that occurred in the cotton industry during the late-eighteenth century had unintentionally assisted in the arrival of an industrial revolution in English football during the late-nineteenth century.

Equally, the man most responsible for transitioning the production of cotton, from domestic to industrial, during the late eighteenth century was Richard Arkwright27 whose invention in 1769, the water frame, would represent ‘a social as well as an industrial revolution’ (Burton, 2014, p.7). This ‘machinery for working cotton (would give) rise, as is well known, to an industrial revolution, a revolution which altered the whole of civil society’ (Engels, 1993, p.15). Arkwright’s invention along with his introduction of the factory system, i.e. the division of labour, would enable Britain to ‘produce good woven cotton cloth more cheaply than anyone else in the world. Soon all nations were buying cheap cloth from the Lancashire mills and England grew rich’ (Hills, 1973, p.1). Arkwright ‘didn’t just invent the spinning machine. He invented the

26 William Sudell was born in Preston on 17 July 1850. 27 Richard Arkwright was born in Preston on 23 July 1732.

modern factory’ (History, 2015). Arkwright would endeavour to mechanise the production of cotton in order to make ‘cotton goods (that would) be greatly superior in quality …increase the Revenue of this Kingdom … (and to) find further employment for the Poor’ (Hills, 1980, p.46).

While it is of great importance to compare and contrast such influential figures as Sudell and Arkwright and their roles in instigating the industrial revolutions in their respective industries it would also be of great urgency to compare and contrast the ability with which the FA and then the FL were able to impose their ideological domination over the professional players from 1883 to 1963, pre and post-industrial capitalist revolution, with the ability/inability of the government (aristocracy) and then the manufacturing class (bourgeoisie) to adhere to the natural law ideology of the eighteenth century, from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Conversely, the acts of defiance committed by the professional players and their Union, i.e. the PFA, in direct response to the various forms of ideological domination will be directly contrasted to the acts of defiance committed by the workers and their associations once the government and the manufacturing class became reluctant to adhere to natural law ideology of the eighteenth century.

To conclude, this thesis will be divided into six chapters. The first chapter will concentrate on English football from 1883 to 1885, with specific focus on the FA’s anti- professional ideology and the acts of defiance committed by the working-class professional players, i.e. the receipt of illicit payments. This particular period of English football will be explained with reference to John B. Thompson’s critical conception of ideology. Furthermore, this period of English football will be compared and contrasted with the cotton industry as a two-dimensional society from the mid-eighteenth to the late-eighteenth century, with specific reference to the government’s adherence to natural law ideology.

The second chapter will concentrate on English football from 1885 to 1886, with specific focus on the FA’s reluctant decision to legalise professionalism in 1885 at the behest of the proletarian professional players and their chairmen. This particular period will be explained with reference to Antonio Gramsci’s theory of ideological hegemony and Jeremy Shapiro’s concept of a two-dimensional society.

The third chapter will concentrate on English football from 1888 to 1901, with specific focus on the formation of the FL in 1888, their introduction of the retain-and-transfer

system in 1893, the introduction of the maximum wage by the FA in 1900, and the formation of the Association Football Players’ Union (AFPU) in 1897. During this particular period the maximum wage of the FA will be explained with reference to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ theory of ideology while the retain-and-transfer system of the FL and the inability of the AFPU to actively defy it will be explained with reference to Karl Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge, Jürgen Habermas’ concept of the bourgeois public sphere and Jeremy Shapiro’s concept of a two-dimensional society. This particular period of English football will be compared and contrasted with the cotton industry, from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, with specific focus on the government’s reluctance to adhere to eighteenth century natural law ideology, the suppression of working-class culture, the cotton workers’ decision to maintain social responsibility through the creation of protective communities, i.e. the efforts of factory reformer, Robert Owen, and the gradual erosion of the cotton industry’s configuration as a two-dimensional society.

The fourth chapter will concentrate on English football from 1907 to 1909, with specific focus on the continued presence of the maximum wage and the retain-and-transfer system and the formation of the Association of Football Players and Trainers’ Union (AFPTU) in 1907. During this particular period the ability of the FA and the FL to maintain their ideological domination of the proletarian professional players through the continued presence of the maximum wage and the retain-and-transfer system will be explained with reference to Jürgen Habermas’ concept of the public sphere, Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge, Gramsci’s ideological hegemony, Marx and Engels theory of ideology, Thompson’s critical conception of ideology and Herbert Marcuse’s category of one-dimensionality. This particular period of English football will be compared and contrasted with the cotton industry, from the early to mid-nineteenth century, with specific focus on the government’s introduction of the 1832 Reform Act and the 1834 New Poor Law – an example of the government and the manufacturing class’ alliance against the workers, the occupational community of the Preston Chartists led by Richard Marsden and their three failed attempts at petitioning the government to enact the Six Points of the People’s Charter.

The fifth chapter will concentrate solely on English football from 1957 to 1963, the removal of the maximum wage in 1961 and the gradual disintegration of the retain-and- transfer system in 1963, the role of individuals such as Jimmy Hill and Cliff Lloyd at the PFA, the five Sunderland players found guilty of receiving illicit payments in 1957 and the court case of George Eastham in 1963. This particular period will be explained with

reference to Jürgen Habermas’ concept of the public sphere, Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge, Gramsci’s ideological hegemony, Marx and Engels’ theory of ideology, Thompson’s critical conception of ideology, Shapiro’s concept of a two-dimensional society, and Karl Marx’s theory of societal development and social revolution.

The final chapter, the Conclusion, will concentrate on the period of time, post-1963, in order to gain a greater understanding of the contemporary relevance of Marxist theory to English football. This decision was taken in order to ascertain, whether or not, class struggle was still to exist in English football after the removal of the maximum wage and retain-and-transfer system and whether such a struggle would eventually lead to the arrival of a working-class revolution. Attention would be focused on four main areas of interest: the issue of spectator hooliganism at English football stadia from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, the continued dispute over professional players’ wages in 2017, the reluctance of Premier League football clubs in London to pay their operational staff the London Living Wage and the Football Supporters’ Federation’s effort, from 2013 to 2017, through the enforcement of their Twenty’s Plenty campaign, to encourage the Premier League to cap away ticket prices at £20.

Chapter One: 1883-1885 Introduction

I would describe this period as pre-industrial capitalist characterised by the FA’s anti- professional ideology, i.e. the handing out of suspensions to those football players found to be professionals, and the working-class players’ repeated receipt of illegal payments to play football, professionally (Young, 1968, p.117). The form, purpose and ability of the FA to impose their anti-professional ideology over the professional players will be explained with reference to Thompson’s critical conception of ideology, i.e. ideology for the purpose of ‘legitimating the power of a dominant social group or class’ (Eagleton, 2007, p.6).

This period of English football will be compared and contrasted with the cotton industry, from the mid to late eighteenth century (pre-industrial capitalist period), and the government’s (aristocracy) adherence to an ideology, which was ‘inclusive of both a conforming and a critical reason (that) possessed a substantive content in terms of which legitimacy was granted to or withheld from the existing order’ (Hearn, 1978, p.39). This ideology sought a ‘more progressively emancipated form of social organization’ (Hearn, 1978, p.63), which in its ‘critical form … contained the evaluative principles’ (Hearn, 1978, p.63) which would allow workers to:

‘critically scrutinize the present order, (offer) alternatives to the existing arrangements by identifying tendencies contained in and suppressed by these arrangements … (as well as) the anticipatory content (that would provide the) transcendental criteria for social action’ (Hearn, 1978, p.63).

The form and purpose of the government’s predominant ideology and the ability of the workers in the cotton industry to hold them accountable to it will therefore be explained with reference to the natural law ideology (Hearn, 1978, p.39) of the eighteenth century. Conversely, the society this form of ideology was intended to create will be explained with reference to Shapiro’s category of a two-dimensional society whereby ‘wealth and resources … and the decisions and policies … were all expressive of social obligations and relationships. The activities of the decision makers were (thus) circumscribed by these overarching cultural patterns’ (Hearn, 1978, p.62).

While this chapter will, in the main, be focused on English football from 1883 to 1885 it is necessary to start this investigation in 1863 when an upper-class elite, i.e. the FA, ‘first codified English football, exclusively for the enjoyment of the amateur gentleman (members of the middle and upper class) who did not play for pay (but instead) for the sheer joy of it’ (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p.4). Thus in 1885, when English football was deemed to have been totally misappropriated by the professional players (the working class emanating from industrial Britain) and their professional employers (members of the lower and middle class), i.e. the ‘industrial entrepreneurs (who would turn) football into a commercialised form of mass entertainment’ (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p.3) there was a struggle. On:

‘the most important date in the modern history of football (Monday, 26 October 1863) … a meeting of representatives (a majority of whom were former public school men) of certain football clubs was convened at the Freemason’s Tavern, in Great Queen Street, London. The purpose of this meeting was to form a Football Association’ (Young, 1969, p.89).

At this meeting eleven football clubs and school representatives from the London area were present. Their first concern centred on the formulation of a unified set of rules that were to be adopted by those teams present:

‘Reference to the Sheffield Rules of 1857 and to the Cambridge Rules of 1862 and 1863 shows that there was a strong body of opinion in favour of civilising the game and by banning one of its more objectionable features (hacking and tripping). The majority of the F.A. delegates determined at the first meeting to follow this body of opinion. But there was opposition from a strong and vocal minority’ (Young, 1969, p.91).

However, by 8 December 1863 and after numerous meetings, a finalised set of rules ‘evolved from those of Cambridge – which were specifically stated to embrace the true principle of the game were formally accepted’ (Young, 1969, p.92). Although these meetings would culminate in the formation of a newly established FA and an acceptance, by those clubs privy, to a unified set of rules, they were only to be accepted by a select few. Unfortunately, for the FA:

‘clubs were springing up like mushrooms, each determining its own playing rules; some clubs, prizing independence, resisted the claims of the F.A. to be

regarded as an authoritative body while those in Yorkshire preferred to take protection under the Sheffield F.A. which was set up in 1867’ (Young, 1969, p.97).

In 1878 C.W. Alcock would write:

‘the recreation of a few had now become the pursuit of thousands – an athletic exercise, carried on under a strict system and, in many cases, by an enforced term of training, almost magnified into a profession. The last words, in 1878, were prophetic’ (Young, 1969, p.111).

Various explanations have been postulated for football’s exponential growth during the mid-nineteenth century. These included the expansion of England’s transport system, i.e. the railway, which was thought to have unwittingly facilitated the arrival of ‘inter-town, inter-regional, and inter-national matches. The fact that Britain was far advanced in this mode of transport is one reason for the early supremacy of the nation in football’ (Young, 1969, p.111). Another explanation for the groundswell in football’s sudden and unexpected popularity was due to the invention of electric lighting, which would enable football matches to be played during periods of the year and times of the day, i.e. hours of darkness after the factories had shut, that previously had not been possible. ‘On October 14, 1878, a match was played at Bramall Lane, Sheffield, under electric lights … under these circumstances football clubs multiplied, and the hegemony’ (Young, 1969, p.111) of the FA began to be questioned. Another cause rested on the forging of a strong relationship between the Church and the working class:

‘Sporting parsons had new worlds to conquer. By now every industrial town had one or more newly built, neo-Gothic, churches, many hopefully set in working- class districts. The curate, and often the vicar, inspired by his own early education, frequently set out to claim souls with a Bible in one hand and a football in the other’ (Young, 1969, p.111).

As the:

‘Church of England revitalised itself during the Victorian era, so it extended its educational activities. Church schools were built, some for the rich, and some – the ‘National Schools’ – for the poor. In 1870 the Education Act of W.E. Forster brought into being the concept of universal, elementary, education, of which the

visible token was the Board School. Because of the abiding principle that aspiration is fed by imitation, schoolmasters on the lower level – often prompted by the curate or the vicar – took up football enthusiasm of those on the higher. In 1877 there was football at Eton, but there was also football at the Black Country school of St. Luke’s, Blakenhall. On March 15 of that year the then headmaster wrote in his log-book: ‘Let boys out earlier on Friday afternoon and they had a Football Match.’ From this beginning sprang Wolverhampton Wanderers’ (Young, 1969, p.112).

While the church would view the extension of football to the working class as a sign of progression (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p.3) the FA were to regard this development as an unwanted challenge to their position of dominance in English football and an erosion of the exclusivity they had fought to instill in football upon establishing their Association in 1863. While this extension would initially be regarded as an unwelcome distraction, one that the FA appeared to have no answer for, it would not be until 1882 that their concerns were manifested on the football field:

‘Until 1881 the (FA Cup) final was regularly contested by London clubs. In that year Darwen came out of Lancashire with a semi-final tie with the ultimate winners of the trophy – Old Carthusians. A year later the Old-Etonians won the Cup. Their opponents were unfamiliar on the London scene. They were Blackburn Rovers. A year later the crowd of 8,000 at the final did not need to ask where Blackburn was. What they wondered was that such a town could send another team to the Oval. This team, Blackburn Olympic, beat the Old Etonians, after extra time, by 2-1. The next year Blackburn Rovers came back to defeat Queen’s Park, Glasgow, also by 2-1. Blackburn won the Cup in the next year, and the next. So was a revolution accomplished and symbolised’ (Young, 1969, p.113).

Unbeknownst to the FA at the time the source of this on-field revolution, i.e. the unexpected competitive advantage of the Blackburn teams, was due to a revolution that was occurring off of the field, i.e. the receipt and payment of inducements to full-time professional players. Once the FA were aware of this practice a struggle was to begin in earnest – a highly destructive struggle that would endure for the next eighty or so years and which with a little foresight could have been avoided (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p.14). However:

‘it is always easy to be wise after the event. Beforehand it is difficult to determine what ought to be done even when certain consequences are foreseeable. The legislators of football would have been saved many headaches if they had stood back in the 1870s to study the pattern evolving from their own actions. On the whole they suffered from the inescapable difficulties inherent in their own antecedents. The two nations of Disraeli, though deplored by him, were accepted by the majority of Victorians. The gentlemen, it was axiomatic, knew best. So, on the football field, they did, until the Old Etonians were compelled to surrender the F.A. Cup to Blackburn Olympic. This was not only a blow to the ancient régime but also to the South of England. It was soon made apparent that there was another interpretation of a two-nations theory: there was the south, and there was the North. Football intensified this division’ (Young, 1969, p.114).

During the 1870s the FA and the working-class professional players would perpetuate this North–South divide due to the unreserved and conspicuous distain the former held for the continued presence of later. However, by the mid-1880s this division would transcend geographical and social divides as it developed into a battle of opposing ideologies held between those at the FA who wished to maintain English football as a pastime solely for the amateur gentleman and those professional players who saw no ill or foul in being paid to play by their football clubs. What had begun as a mere class struggle between the FA and the professional players would quickly develop into a struggle between two opposing classes and their diametrically opposed ideologies concerning the existence of professionalism in English football.

Throughout this period the FA would attempt to identify and suspend those football players who were found to be professionals (Young, 1968, p.117) as their presence and conduct were considered to be at constant odds with the ‘ideological principles’ (Young, 1969, p.114) that had been instilled in English football by the FA upon their founding in 1863. The purpose of such a decision was to establish the FA as the dominant social group in English football. In response the professional players, who were not supported by ‘ample private funds’ (Young, 1969, p.117) and who believed that illicit inducements were an essential requirement for their continued presence in the game, would launch an ideological counteroffensive, in an attempt to defy and revolt against the FA‘s efforts to secure ideological domination in English football. In the eyes of the FA professionalism and those football players who engaged in it were an ‘accursed weed, a serious evil, and

a wicked thing that would ruin the game utterly if allowed to run riot’ (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p.3). Amateur players on the other hand were thought of as:

‘gentlemen … (who) were … superior to their professional brothers because (they) continued to uphold the moral values that had been invested in team games by their public school creators’ (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p.4).

Conversely, the professionals were perceived to be:

‘dirty, (while) the amateur was clean … professional football, in the eyes of the influential minority, belonged exclusively to industrial Britain. The muck that made the money rubbed off on the game and its practitioners’ (Young, 1969, p.128).

Throughout the 1870s the FA would be unable to stem not only the participation of working-class professional players from the North (and later those from Scotland, Ireland and Wales) but also the establishment of professional football clubs from the same region. This failure would be compounded by an inability to convince these football players and football clubs to surrender their autonomy to their authority and to abide by the rules that they assumed were implicit to codified English football. During the 1880s these shortcomings would be exacerbated by the inability of amateur Southern football clubs to compete with the professional Northern football clubs in the FA Cup. Their subsequent failure to identify the source of the Northern clubs’ competitive advantage before it was too late and their inability to impose their authority and dominance over the professional players, once aware of their illicit actions, would intensify a relationship that over the next eighty years would be characterised by mistrust, hostility, and subterfuge.

It is important to note at this stage that the payment and receipt of illicit inducements to professional players had been occurring, unabated and undetected, in English football since the mid-1870s when football’s popularity as a spectator sport had started to burgeon. This process, originally a clandestine operation, would initially draw relatively little attention or even suspicion from the FA. What had started as the ‘remuneration of expenses, progressed to the payment of wages for time lost at work, and then to the offer of employment at local factories and workshops to encourage players to turn out for a particular team’ (Sanders, 2007, p.110). The difficulty for the FA was in identifying, whether or not, players were being paid to play football or being paid to work at a

factory, which happened to be affiliated to a football club. However, this point would no longer be moot once Northern clubs started to employ professional players from other countries within the British Isles. The majority of these players would emigrate to England from Scotland and it was to Lancashire that the greatest number went to ply their trade:

‘The Scottish football professor or showman had actually been the cause of the introduction of professionalism into England. He was received at first with admiring diffidence, and afterwards with open arms by the sport-loving cotton operatives … of Lancashire’ (Gibson and Pickford, 1905, p.86).

The ensuing victories of Blackburn Olympic and Blackburn Rovers in the FA Cup from 1883 to 1886 would shine a light on this previously veiled practice that would alert the Association sufficiently for them to act. Subsequently, an:

‘examination of the constitution of the principal teams in Lancashire at this time would lead to a conclusion from which deductions could easily be made. Most of the clubs had a core of Scottish professors. Immediately, the reason is not far to seek: the Scotsmen came to improve the teams. Why they came, however, is another matter, intelligible in economic terms’ (Young, 1969, p.116).

Prior to the success of Blackburn Olympic and Blackburn Rovers industrial prosperity in England had come at the expense of agricultural hardship. Consequently, industries in the North of England were in need of as many workers as they could muster. In order to satisfy these demands workers from Scotland, Ireland, and Wales would enter the country on mass in search of employment. Resourceful football clubs in the north would use this development to their advantage:

‘From one angle the situation – exacerbated by the competitive efficiency of the Lancashire teams – was scandalous. There were inducements. There were undercover subsidies. There was even a tendency to take football seriously … as this transition took place polite eyes were averted. When it was too late to do anything effective moral strictures were applied. There was much mudded thinking. The simon-pure line was that since football was a game it should be its own reward. All right, but what about those whose skill was not supported by ample private funds … everyone in Lancashire knew that many footballers did not go unrewarded. No one admitted it’ (Young, 1969, p.117).

By 1883 the FA had become fully aware of the source of the Northern teams’ competitive advantage and they would for the first time attempt to impose penalties and suspensions upon those who they found guilty of engaging in professionalism (Sanders, 2009, p.116). As the FA ‘regarded themselves, as patricians, heirs to the doctrine of leadership, and so lawgivers by at least semi-divine right. They acted according to their rights’ (Young, 1969, p.119). Anyone found guilty of floating their dogma was deemed to be in breach of rule 15, i.e. that:

‘any member of a club receiving remuneration or consideration of any sort above his actual expenses, and any wages actually lost by any such player taking part in any match, shall be debarred from taking part in either Cup, Inter- Association, or International contests and any club employing such player shall be excluded from this Association’ (Sanders, 2009, p.116).

In taking this action against professionalism the FA would, for the first time, be fully intent on ridding the English game of its professional element through the mobilisation and implementation of its anti-professional ideology. While the aim of this ideology was to eradicate the payment and receipt of illicit inducements to professional players and with it the competitive advantage of the Northern football clubs, it was at its core a delayed, latent response to the unease at which they felt, during the 1870s, towards the mere presence of the working-class players and their football clubs from the North in English football. By handing out suspensions to those in breach of rule 15, I believe that the FA were explicitly seeking to identify themselves as the dominant social group in English football by not only ridding the English game of professionalism and therefore its working-class proponents but also the competitive advantage of the Northern football clubs who sort to employ professional players from Scotland, Ireland and Wales – an arrangement that had been pivotal in the success of Blackburn Olympic and Blackburn Rovers in the FA Cup during the 1880s.

By prohibiting Northern football clubs from employing professional players from around the British Isles the FA hoped that they would have no choice but to terminate their association with the English game, due to the economic disadvantages that this would bring. Those who chose, however, unlikely to remain in English football would be forced to end their association with professionalism and conform to the FA’s ideological predilection for amateurism. If successful English football would be returned to its aristocratic, Southern origins and to the amateur, upper/middle-class gentleman players and their clubs that it was intended for – a society created in the FA’s own

image. The FA would then be able to preserve English football as an institution free from the incubus of industrialised capitalism while establishing and sustaining relations of dominance over all who participated in the game in a manner that was intended and indeed assumed upon their establishment in 1863. While the rest of English society had been consumed by industrial capitalism during the nineteenth century the FA believed that English football would ‘always be a sport, never a business, while those who played would always be sportsmen, never workmen’ (Harding, 1971, p.3).

Nevertheless, against their best intentions, these attempts, while in receipt of support from amateur football players and football clubs from the South, would not receive the same consideration from the general public, i.e. spectators (Young, 1969, p.117). Those who had paid to watch football were paying because they wanted ‘to see a spectacle (and because they wanted) to see the best rather than the worst’ (Young, 1969, p.114). The working-class professional players who dedicated all of their time and energy to their craft were able to offer the spectator what the amateur gentleman football player could not. However, the FA’s detractors would not be contained to just expectant and demanding spectators as the most prominent and potent protests would be forthcoming from the chairmen of professional clubs who were understandably perturbed by the FA’s attacks on their employees and the detrimental effect it was having on their finances. The most prominent critic was Mr William Sudell, manager of Goodair cotton mill and chairman of Preston North End football club. His team had been thrown out of the FA Cup in 1884 for fielding undisguised professional players against Upton Park and his protest against the FA was due in part to his aspiration to ‘create the world’s first unashamedly professional football team’ (Sanders, 2009, p.110). In 1885 he would threaten the FA with the formation of an alternate association, namely the British Football Association, if professionalism was not legalised. ‘Support for the B.F.A. (would come) from twenty-eight clubs, with the exception of Sunderland and Aston Villa all from Lancashire’ (Young, 1969, p.118). It was axiomatic that these ‘clubs were determined not to bow the knee to the Southerners’ (Sanders, 2009, p.124).

On the 19 January 1885 at the Freemason’s Tavern, the same venue where the FA had been established over twenty years previously, a meeting was held between the FA and the professional clubs to discuss the matter of professionalism. At this meeting:

‘Billy Sudell rose – to wild cheers. He was now recognized as the champion of professionalism and his speech was a moment of high drama. Gentlemen, he said, Preston are all professionals but if you refuse to legalize them they will be

amateurs. We shall all be amateurs, and you cannot prove otherwise’ (Sanders, 2009, pp.125-126).

Sudell’s speech would dumbfound the FA and after various meetings throughout 1885 the FA would eventually concede defeat. They would have no alternative but to replace their dogmatic, ideologically driven approach to governance for a more pragmatic one. In doing so conventional wisdom would be abandoned and replaced by a hesitant acceptance of the working-class professional player. Professionalism in English football would now, for the first time, be deemed a legal activity provided that certain stipulations were not breached (Sanders, 2009, p.127). However, while the legalisation of professionalism was to confirm the FA’s inability to successfully impose their anti- professional ideology over the professional players during this period, the ability of the working class to play football, professionally without restriction would only be possible for a short period of time, i.e. 1885 to 1893: a reality that would result from the FL’s introduction of the retain-and-transfer system in 1893 and the FA’s introduction of the maximum wage in 1900. Thus:

‘the amateur-professional split was a profound one, reflecting deeply held class prejudices. Certain key members of the FA were extremely disturbed by professionalism in sport and had only accepted it if they could somehow control it and, in their view, safeguard the principles essential to true sport’ (Harding. 2009, pp.13-14).

• John B. Thompson’s critical conception of ideology and Jeremy Shapiro’s concept of a two-dimensional society will help to explain the form and purpose of the FA’s anti-professional ideology and the ability of the working-class professional players to defy such ideological domination.

During this particular period (1883-1885) the anti-professional ideology of the FA, would be visible through the handing out of suspensions to those professional players and their football clubs who were found to have violated rule 15. In 1883, Accrington would be:

‘expelled from the F.A. having been found guilty of giving an inducement to one Beresford – formerly of Staveley, now of Church – to join them (and) on January 19, 1884, 12,000 spectators turned up at Preston to see a cup-tie against Upton Park. After a drawn game the London club lodged a protest a protest

against the inclusion of undisguised professionals in the Preston side. Preston were thrown out of the competition’ (Young, 1969, p.117).

Within this context the form and purpose of the FA’s anti-professional ideology, as has been mentioned, would be to establish themselves as the dominant social group in English football with the imposition of rule 15 acting as a method with which to ‘sustain relations of domination’ (Eagleton, 2007, p.5). This process of legitimation, according to Thompson, involved:

‘six different strategies. A dominant power may legitimate itself by promoting (1) beliefs and values congenial to it; naturalizing (2) and universalizing (3) such beliefs so as to render them as self-evident and apparently inevitable; denigrating (4) ideas which might challenge it; excluding (5) rival forms of thought, perhaps by some unspoken but systematic logic; and obscuring (6) social reality in ways convenient to itself’ (Eagleton, 2007, p.6).

Thompson’s critical conception of ideology thus provides a valid explanation for the form and purpose of the FA’s anti-professional ideology during this period. As the FA sort to promote the belief that:

‘Association Football had been codified in the 19th century … as a means of improving the mental and physical health of public school boys and, later, as a means of instilling concepts such as fair play, combination and camaraderie’ (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p.3).

And to naturalize this belief by establishing that:

‘amateur players were … superior to their professional brothers because amateurs continued to uphold the moral values that had been invested in team games by their public school creators’ (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p.4).

In doing so the FA hoped to engender the professionals with a sense of shame that would lead one prominent player, Colin Veitch, to express:

‘his dismay in 1910 at the distress his decision to become a paid player had caused his family. I recollect as though the occurrence was yesterday how many months of agony I had to go through before I could finally admit to the

monstrous truth that I had signed a professional form for Newcastle United’ (Harding & Taylor, 2003, pp.4-5).

In continuation, the ability of the FA to promote and naturalize their belief would be predicated on their capacity to universalize such a belief. This feat would be secured through its circulation in the media, i.e. The Hull Packet and East Riding Times who in 1884 would write:

‘rough and unfair play, a disregard of the rules, disgraceful rows, and abuse of the umpires and referees, can all be traced, directly or indirectly, to the presence in certain teams of paid professional players, to whom a love of the game and fair play are of very small importance as compared to the absolutely necessity of winning a match and dividing the gate’ (Sanders, 2009, pp.118-119).

Thus the ability to promote, naturalize and universalize the belief that professionalism was ‘an accursed weed, a serious evil, and a wicked thing that would ruin the game utterly if allowed to run riot’ (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p.3) would enable the FA to sufficiently denigrate the antithetical idea that:

‘pro footballers were not hired footpads or kicking ruffians simply because they found they could earn a living from utilising the skill with their toes … they were merely strong-limbed youngsters of the … working class with a passion for the game’ (Harding and Taylor, 2009, p.5).

Additionally, I would view the imposing of rule 15 by the FA as an attempt to exclude the professional players’ rival form of thought from subverting their own, i.e. that ‘football (was) something else as well as a passion ... a profession’ (Harding and Taylor, 2009, p.2) – a profession that was in ‘no way injurious to the best intentions of the game’ (Young, 1969, p.118). If successful then the FA would be able to obscure social reality in a manner convenient to itself. As:

‘the game’s ruling body, the Football Association, (were) a group of men drawn from the upper echelons of British society – honourable men but … men of prejudice, (who saw) themselves as patricians, heirs to the doctrine of leadership and so law-givers by at least semi-divine right. They acted according to their rights’ (Young, 1969, p.119).

However, as has been mentioned, the FA would be unable to sustain relations of domination and as such they would fail to legitimate themselves as the dominant social group in English football. This would become abundantly clear in 1884 when the FA decided to suspend Preston North End for violating rule 15 on the 19 January 1884 in a match against Upton Park. ‘It (was) this game that would change the face of football’ (Sanders, 2009, p.116). The following day C.W. Alcock of the FA would write to Preston North End stating that they had received a complaint from Upton Park on the grounds that their club had fielded ineligible, illegal professional players. The following week William Sudell, would be called to a meeting at the FA. At this meeting Sudell would win:

‘admiration by frankly admitting that Preston imported players and found them jobs – although he disputed that this contravened rule 15 … (However), Preston were found guilty and thrown out of the FA Cup. The move caused outrage in Lancashire. If Preston were guilty, so were almost every other major Lancashire team … the action brought against Preston (would bring) to a head a conflict over professionalism that had been simmering for some time. The FA had set up the first of numerous sub-committees to investigate the issue in October 1882. But the Lancashire clubs had simply presented it with false accounts, and in early 1883 it had solemnly reported that it could find no evidence of professionalism’ (Sanders, 2009, p.117).

In the summer of 1884 the FA would send out questionnaires to member clubs requiring them to state the particulars of each and every player on their books, including the length of time they had lived in the local area and, whether or not, they had been paid for their services. In essence, the FA were asking football clubs to prove their innocence rather than have their guilt proved. This ‘catechism as Jimmy Catton (journalist) called it was a declaration of war, and the Lancashire clubs knew it. Their very existence was at stake’ (Sanders, 2009, p.124).

In October 1884 Sudell would arrange meetings with representatives from numerous Lancashire football clubs in order to formulate a unified, mutually agreeable response to the FA. After much deliberation they would decide to leave the FA’s questionnaire unanswered, withdraw their participation from the FA Cup and to propose the establishment of an alternate break-away union, namely the British Football Association. A union that was deemed to ‘embrace clubs and players from every nationality’ (Young, 1969, p.118).

This threat by Sudell and his accomplices would achieve its principle aim and in November 1884 Alcock would propose that professionalism be legalised provided that certain stipulations were not breached, i.e. no professional player could play in the FA cup. At this time ‘the more intelligent officials at the FA could see the need for compromise over the issue of professionalism … they had tried to crush out professionalism but could not’ (Sanders, 2009, pp.121, 124). However, the battle had not been won just yet. In order for professionalism to be officially recognised it would have to be agreed upon by a two-thirds majority of FA members. On 20 July 1885, after several meetings, those who opposed professionalism would have no choice but to concede defeat. Those in favour of professionalism had won by thirty-five votes to five and ‘so the modern age of football dawned … Sudell … was now determined to push football forward to an era in which the professional element was dominant’ (Sanders, 2009, pp.127-128).

In this respect I wholeheartedly believe that the legalisation of professionalism in 1885 represented the FA’s failure to impose their ideological domination over the professional players. For Thompson, however, ‘the concept of ideology cannot be considered in isolation, but must be situated within the framework of a general social theory’ (1984, p.127). While Thompson’s critical conception of ideology was able to explain the form and purpose of the FA’s anti-professional ideology it would be necessary to identify a social theory that could best explain the type of society that the FA were trying to thwart and the society the professional players and William Sudell were trying to construct through their acts of defiance. As a result it was decided to focus on Shapiro’s concept of a two-dimensional society, a:

‘politicized society wherein questions of instrumental action, such as the allocation of labor, and the organization of work, (were) expressive of underlying social obligations and relationships. These features of two- dimensional society are found in traditional or pre-industrial capitalist forms of societal organization’ (Hearn, 1978, p20).

I believe, therefore, that Sudell, a ‘privately educated (man) … from the middle ranks of society … part of the new managerial class which had sprung up in the in the industrial North’ (Sanders, 2009, p.116) was seeking to create, through the legalisation of professionalism, a two-dimensional politicised society for English football. Prior to which the FA had posited that ‘football was a world within a world and they were its rulers’ (Harding, 2009, p.14). The imposition of rule 15 would be a manifestation of this

belief. Rather than promote English football as a two-dimensional politicised society the FA were actively trying to suppress such a notion. Seminal figures at the FA, including general secretary, Nicholas Lane Jackson, a man who had collected the evidence for the prosecution of Preston North End in 1884, had despised the:

‘democratization of the game and looked back to a golden age when football was confined to old public-school boys. He felt that since football had become the adopted sport of the masses … good sportsmanship did not operate so freely’ (Sanders, 2009, p.122).

However, the legalisation of professionalism would put paid to the FA’s station as ‘patricians, heirs to the doctrine of ‘leadership’ (Young, 1969, p.119) with its arrival fitting in with the ‘broader trends in society. In 1884 the Third Reform Act massively increased the number of men eligible to vote in parliamentary elections. The age of democracy was dawning’ (Sanders, 2009, p.121) … and ‘in the course of time Association football, its roots spreading in democratic soil, (was becoming) a symbol of aspiration and emancipation’ (Young, 1969, p.119). For professional players:

‘were marketable goods and they are not ashamed. Why, it may be asked, need they be ashamed of it? Every man has his price, we are told by great authority’ (Harding, 2003, p.2).

Thus, the chairmen of professional clubs, led and directed by William Sudell, had through their acts of defiance, created a society for English football where the allocation of labour and the organisation of work were now expressive of underlying social obligations and relationships. As a result professional players were now:

‘allowed to compete in all Cups, County and Inter Association matches, provided they qualified as follows:

(a) in Cup matches by birth or residence for two (2) years last past within six (6) miles of the ground or headquarters of the Club for which they play. (b) In County matches as defined in Rule XI, which applies equally to all players whether amateur or professional. (c) In Inter-Association matches by bona fide membership for the two (2) years last past some Club belonging to one of the competing Associations.

No professional shall be allowed to serve on any Association Committee or represent his own or any other club at any meeting of the Football Association.

No professional shall be allowed to play for more than one Club in any season without special permission of the Committee of the Football Association.

All professionals shall be annually registered in a book to be kept by the Committee of the Football Association, and no professional shall be allowed to play unless he has been so registered’ (Young, 1969, pp.120-121).

• The form and purpose of the government’s predominant ideology during the eighteenth century (1750-1770) and the ability of the workers in the cotton industry to hold them accountable to it will be explained with reference to the natural law ideology of the eighteenth century and Shapiro’s category of a two-dimensional society.

In an attempt to stimulate a more profound and theoretical understanding of English football from 1883 to 1885 and the malevolent relationship that was to exist between the FA and the professional players, it is necessary to compare and contrast this pre- industrial capitalist period of English football, with the pre-industrial capitalist period of the cotton industry, circa 1750 to 1770, and the benevolent relationship between the government (aristocracy) and the domestic producers of cotton (working class). From 1883 to 1885 the FA’s determination to eradicate professionalism in English football would be attempted through the mobilisation of an anti-professional ideology (Sanders, 2009, p.116). For the FA ‘football was a game (and thus) it should be its own reward’ (Young, 1969, 121).

While the purpose of this ideology was to deny the professional players a two- dimensional politicised society, the government, in stark contrast, from 1750 to 1770, would adhere to a natural law ideology, which:

‘embodied both a conforming and critical reason, and thus was capable of legitimating both the prevailing arrangements and the opposition to these arrangements. In its critical form natural law ideology anticipated a more progressively emancipated form of social organization (that) served three

general and related purposes. First, it contained the evaluative principles, which were used to critically scrutinize the present order. Second, it offered alternatives to the existing arrangements by identifying the tendencies contained and suppressed by these arrangements. And, thirdly, the anticipatory content provided transcendental criteria for social action’ (Hearn, 1978, pp.62-63).

Within this context the cotton industry from 1750 to 1770 can be viewed as a quintessential, two-dimensional society where:

‘the allocation of wealth and resources, the distribution of products, and the decisions and policies which were made were all expressive of underlying social obligations and relationships. Incorporated in the status order, these normative obligations were directly associated with the legitimacy of society. Whether the existing order was approved or discredited depended largely on the extent to which the various status orders adequately fulfilled their obligations. Thus political domination was significantly shaped by these normative prescriptions. The activities of the decision makers were (therefore) circumscribed by these overarching cultural patterns’ (Hearn, 1978, p.62).

While the first men paid to play football would have ‘great difficulty in establishing both their status as professionals and their normal rights as working men’ (Taylor and Harding, 2003, p.IX), a myth precipitated by the falsehood that:

‘professional footballers were so desperate to play and felt so privileged to be allowed to do so by the club owners that they gratefully accepted conditions and terms akin to those once enjoyed by medieval serfs’ (Taylor and Harding, 2003, p.IX), workers in the cotton industry, during the 1750s and 60s, would have a substantial influence on the regulation of their wages and the conditions within which they worked. At this time a more compassionate approach would be taken by the government towards the workers, one that identified the worker as being the basis upon which the nation’s wealth was built. Accordingly, the government understood that if they could improve the lot of the worker they would have a greater chance of increasing economic prosperity. During this particular period, prior to the introduction of mechanised machinery, the weaving and spinning of cotton was designed around the domestic system of manufacture where:

‘the nuclear family served as the basic unit of production … the father wove and apprenticed his son into weaving. The mother was responsible for preparatory processes; in general she spun, taught the daughters how to spin, and allocated the picking, cleaning, drying, carding, etc. among the children’ (Hearn 1978, pp.32-33).

Such families lived in the countryside and they subsisted, with relative ease, on wages earned in the familial home. Since the domestic market was virtually the only one, and therefore free from competition, wages were yet to be impinged upon by the presence of remote markets in distant countries. The weaver and his family could thus afford to rent a small plot of land that could be tended during time away from cotton production. They could work as much or as little as they wanted, as they were no proletarians. According to Engels, the:

‘workers vegetated throughout a passably comfortable existence, leading a righteous and peaceful life in all piety and probity; and their material position was far better than of their successors. They did not need to overwork; they did no more than they chose to do, and yet earned what they needed. They had leisure for healthful work in garden or field, work which, in itself, was recreation for them, and they could take part besides in the recreations and games – bowling, cricket, football, etc., contributed to their physical health and vigour. Their children grew up in the fresh country air, and, if they could help their parents at work, it was only occasionally; while of eight or twelve hours for them there was of no question. They regarded their squire, the greatest landholder of the region, as their natural superior; they asked advice of him, laid their small disputes before him for settlement, and gave him all honour. (They) never talked politics, never conspired, never thought, delighted in physical exercises, listened with inherited reverence when the Bible was read, and were, in their unquestioning humility, exceedingly well-disposed towards the superior classes. They were comfortable in their silent vegetation, and but for the industrial revolution they would never have emerged from this existence, which, cozily romantic as it was, was nevertheless not worthy of human beings; they were merely toiling machines in the service of the few aristocrats who had guided history down to that time’ (Engels, 1993, pp.15-17).

However:

‘unpredictability marked the domestic system of manufacture … not surprisingly unemployment in mercantile England was commonplace. Given the frequency of unemployment, laborers received protection from the Poor Law and the Statute of Artificers … together they constituted the foundation of the code of labor which prevailed in England for most of the eighteenth century’ (Hearn, 1978, p.33).

Throughout this period the government, as a result of:

‘pressure from workers, as well as other groups in society, (would feel obliged) to improve Poor Law policies along more equitable lines … (thus bringing) about the enactment of the Gilbert Act in 1782’ (Hearn, 1978, p.36).

Since such pressure represented a severe challenge to their legitimacy ‘the decision makers (were) quick to come to terms with the grievances of the common people’ (Hearn, 1978, p.63). The passing of the Gilbert Act:

‘represented the culmination of (this) pressure. Relief was not merely to be granted in the customary form of temporary subsidies at times of sickness, bad trade, or high prices … it was also to be provided a as guarantee of maintenance during an indefinite period. In short the Gilbert Act obligated the government to maintain an adequate standard of living for the workers either by providing them employment or with relief in aid of wages. The Act was one part of the well- ordered system of protective laws and regulatory principles upon which mercantile capitalism rested. In effect, these principles introduced moral overtones to economic and industrial relations, creating a sense of responsibility, which infused most social activities. The principles appealed to were of social justice and national expedience, not those of economic theory. As they pertained to the worker, these regulatory standards contributed to the determination of what standard of living, what conditions of work, how much wages, in short, of what kind of protection ought to be given in justice to the laboring man. The economic closely intermingled with the political; and to the extent that the political continued to rely upon traditional legitimations, social obligations took precedence over market considerations’ (Hearn, 1978, pp.36-37).

Thus, while the cotton industry from 1750 to 1770 would be characterised by ‘the basic features of what has been described earlier as a two-dimensional society’ (Hearn, 1978, p.62), English football, characterised by the illegality of professionalism from 1883 to 1885, would not conform to such a societal configuration. Once the FA were aware that the professional players had been in receipt of illicit inducements to play, rather than perceive this as a severe challenge to their legitimacy, therefore quickly coming to terms with the grievances of the common people, they would greet such defiance with suppression rather than concession. The FA’s eventual decision to legalise professionalism, reached after a drawn out process lasting from 18 January 1884 to 20 July 1885, would result from pressure placed upon them by the ‘nine rebel clubs (who had threatened) to establish a breakaway, professional British Football Association’ (Sanders, 2009, p.124). Such a decision, therefore, had not be predicated on a code of labour operating in English football but rather on an assertion that ‘until professionalism (was) legalized the deadlock … (would) continue. It was an unavoidable evil that needed to be controlled’ (Sanders, 2009, p.122).

Chapter Two: 1885-1886 Introduction

The inability of the FA to impose their ideological domination over the working-class professional players had led to the legalisation of professionalism in 1885. English football would, as a consequence, be categorized as a two-dimensional politicised society whereby the decision to legalise professionalism would appear, albeit superficially, to be expressive of underlying social obligations and relationships. This decision, it was thought, would bring ‘together all classes in football … on terms of perfect equality’ (Young, 1969, p.119). From 1885 to 1888 English football would be characterised by a form of ideology more congruent to the natural law ideology of the eighteenth century.

In his attempt to coerce the FA into legalising professionalism, William Sudell, in his anticipation of a more progressively emancipated form of social organisation had provided the necessary social action that would enable the FA ‘to restore a natural justice’ (Hearn, 1978, p.63) to English football. Sudell was aware that the:

‘events of 1885 represented a watershed and that there could be no turning back. And, having revolutionized the FA, Sudell could now return to his real ambition: to create the world’s greatest football team in the world’ (Sanders, 2009, p.128).

In pressurising the FA into legalising professionalism I suggest that Sudell had been responsible not only for causing a revolution within the FA but also an industrial capitalist revolution that would sweep through the whole of English football. First, in 1885 with the introduction of capitalism, manifested by the legalisation of professionalism, and, secondly, in 1888 with the introduction of industrialism manifested through the formation of the FL, i.e. ‘a cartel, which rapidly assumed monopoly powers … membership brought … a regular flow of income … a guaranteed number of fixtures ... sustained competition’ (Harding, 2009, p.12), etc. As a consequence after 1888 English football’s configuration as a two-dimensional society would gradually be eroded, i.e. ‘only when capitalism became associated with industrialism … (would) the two-dimensional quality of social life undermined’ (Hearn, 1978, p.140).

• Gramsci’s work on ideological hegemony will help to explain the FA’s decision to legalise professionalism, albeit with stipulations, and the ability of Alcock, general secretary of the FA and, William Sudell, chairman of Preston North End, to seek compromise over the issue of professionalism.

In 1884 it would be no secret that players in Lancashire were being paid to play. ‘It was indeed the common talk of the mill and foundry hands, though the more responsible club officials denied the fact in public’ (Gibson and Pickford, 1905, p.76). The crisis would arrive:

‘on 19 January 1884, when PNE played Upton Park in the FA Cup at Deepdale. After the game finished 1-1 Upton Park were believed to have protested to the FA that Preston had included disguised professionals in their ranks. Preston were disqualified from the competition. Afterwards to the astonishment of the FA William Sudell came clean. He admitted that Preston Players were paid, and pointed out that was the case at many clubs and many players’ (Dougan and Young, 1975, p.24).

The honesty of Sudell’s admission must have been ‘a surprise to the legislators, and it certainly led to a quickening campaign for or against legalisation’ (Gibson and Pickford, 1905, p.77). On 11 February 1884 a committee of the FA would convene a meeting where they would examine the issue of professionalism. Alcock, honorary secretary of the FA at that time, was aware that drastic measures would need to be taken in order to protect the game and to ensure its future. He put forward a suggestion that professionalism be legalised and requested that it be contemplated at a special meeting of the FA. Alcock had in his mind the ‘happy relations existing in cricket under the (same) roof between gentleman and players, and hoped to apply the same to football’ (Gibson and Pickford, 1905, p.78). While Alcock wished to legalise professionalism he did not see himself as an advocate.

According to Gramsci, to ‘win hegemony was to establish moral, political and intellectual leadership in social life by diffusing one’s own world view throughout the fabric of society as a whole, thus equating one’s own interests with the interests of society at large’ (Eagleton, 2007, pp.115-116). In this respect I believe that Alcock, as general secretary of the FA, was attempting to position the FA as the dominant social group in English football by securing hegemony, i.e. allowing for the legalisation of

professionalism provided that the professional players did not breach certain stipulations.

Alcock’s wish that professionalism be legalised would be narrowly accepted, however, by the time the FA held their AGM on 28 February dissenting voices had organised and Alcock’s suggestion was dismissed. Another committee was created by the FA in order to identity alternate methods with which to repress professionalism. In June this committee would convene in order to recommend a string of robust methods that were designed to crush the receipt of payment to players:

‘The die-hards in the FA were convinced that professionalism was evil – and this was the exact word they used. They began throwing rules around with abandon. If a player lost wages to play for a club, he could have wages made up but only for one day in a week. In cup-ties only Englishmen were to be allowed to play for English clubs. Regarding other matches foreigners (i.e. Scots, Irish, or Welsh) must fill in forms to show their occupations before coming to England, their jobs since migration, their wages on each side of the divide, and their reasons for wishing to change their place of residence’ (Dougan and Young, 1975, p.24).

In response on 10 October 1884, with Sudell presiding, nine dissident football clubs would gather in Bolton at the Commercial Hotel. They agreed that they were no longer concerned with deception or concealment. They were now prepared and willing to confront the FA over the principle of professionalism. Consequently, the FA sent forms to all the players asking for their particulars, however, they:

‘went unfilled. Angry officials at Lancashire clubs threatened to form a new body, a British Football Association, in order to remove the game from the unrealities of the conservatives who looked like getting their own way’ (Dougan and Young, 1975, p.24).

The:

‘age of democracy was dawning and the more intelligent officials at the FA could see the need for compromise over the issue of professionalism. I object to the argument that it is immoral to work for a living, and I cannot see why men should not, with that object, labour at football as at cricket. What Alcock

proposed – the legalization of professionalism, but under stringent conditions – was a compromise’ (Sanders, 2009, p.121).

By seeking compromise over the issue of professionalism, I suggest that the FA were, albeit reluctantly, acting as a hegemonic class, a class that was taking into account ‘the interests and tendencies of those whom it exerts power, (a class that) must be prepared to compromise in this respect’ (Eagleton, 2007, p.122). In order to establish hegemony Gramsci stated that it was necessary to involve the:

‘coordination of different interests and their ideological expression, so that an all-embracing group, possibly society as a whole, was engaged. Hegemony produced compromise – an equilibrium that took some account of the subordinate groups’ (Freeden, 2003, p.20).

For Gramsci the subordinated group, i.e. the proletariat:

‘spontaneously formed an intellectual and cultural hierarchy …where the activity of the writers and propagandists cannot penetrate. In workers’ circles and leagues, in conversations outside the factory, the word of socialist criticism is dissected, propagated, made ductile and malleable for every mind and every culture. In a complex and varied environment like that of a major industrial city the organs of capillary transmission of opinion, which the will of the leaders would never succeed in creating and setting up, arise spontaneously’ (Gramsci, 1985, pp.33-34).

Gramsci’s concept of ideological hegemony suggests that, William Sudell, in his determination ‘to push football into an era in which the professional element was dominant’ (Sanders, 2009, pp.127-128) was acting as an organic intellectual, a creation of a developing social class whose role it was to impart upon that class some ‘homogenous self-consciousness in the cultural, political and economic fields’ (Eagleton, 2007, p.119).

The organic intellectual was:

‘less a contemplative thinker … than an organizer, constructor, permanent persuader, who actively participates in social life and helps bring to theoretical

articulation those positive political currents already contained within it’ (Eagleton, 2007, p.119).

The purpose of the organic intellectual was to offer a connection or axis between a certain philosophy, i.e. the belief that professionalism ‘was in no way injurious to the best intentions of the game’ (Young, 1969, p.118) and the public, i.e. ‘the angry officials of the Lancashire clubs’ (Dougan and Young, 1975, p.24). In doing so Sudell was able to achieve his goal of constructing a ‘common consciousness, a cultural-social unity in which otherwise heterogeneous individual wills’ (Eagleton, 2007, p.119), i.e. ‘the amateur-professional split’ (Harding, 2009, p.13), are joined together on the foundation of a shared understanding of the world. In this respect the function of William Sudell in English football was to:

‘create a two-way passage between political analysis and popular experience. Such a world view (would) cement together a social and political bloc, as a unifying, organizing, inspirational principle rather than a system of abstract ideas’ (Eagleton, 2007, p.120).

At the beginning of 1885 the dispute over professionalism would continue and the FA would convene various meetings in order that a conclusion be reached. Surprisingly, the most obdurate opponents to professionalism were not from the South of England, but rather from cities, including Birmingham, Sheffield and Nottingham:

‘Clegg, the Sheffield man … was a dominant figure in the generation of officials who succeeded Alcock … his father was three times mayor of the city in the 1880s … Clegg was later president of the British Temperance League … (and he) was severely hostile to professionalism. But he combined this with an equally fierce hostility to public school snobbery. This chippy, complex mixture was typical of many of the new, more middle-class officials entering into the FA, including Charles Crump, the all-powerful president of the Birmingham Football Association. These men lacked the social confidence to compromise. They now formed the backbone of the resistance’ (Sanders, 2009, pp.122-123).

In Gramsci’s opinion, men like Clegg and Crump, contrary to the organic intellectual, were traditional intellectuals. ‘Hangovers from some previous historical period, i.e. Jackson … ‘who looked back to a golden age when football was confined to old public-

school boy’ (Sanders, 2009, p.122). For Gramsci ‘traditional intellectual (were) perhaps once organic, but no longer so’ (Eagleton, 2007, p.120).

Thus on 19 January 1885 the FA committee’s proposals were presented at a special General Meeting. At this meeting over two hundred representatives met from all over the country. They ‘arranged themselves tribally, Lancashire and the North on the right side … the Southern and Midland organisations on the left’ (Sanders, 2009, p.125). Alcock would stand up and state that professionalism should be legalised subject to stringent conditions. He identified a match played two days earlier in London between Preston North End and the most famous amateur football club of the era, Corinthians, as proof that professional players played the game ‘without undue roughness, and that gentlemen do not object to meet them. It (would be) opposed by Charles Crump of Birmingham’ (Sanders, 2009, p.125). However, the rebel clubs’ threat to form a rival Association had started to have an influence on some at the FA:

‘The cause of the professional was a rising one. Some were tired of the continuous bickerings and the almost endless discussions, for on more than one occasion the legislators had sat until the morning hours in fruitless efforts to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion’ (Gibson and Pickford, 1905, p.87).

Next to speak was Sudell who received a rapturous ovation. He was identified as the most vocal and passionate advocate of professionalism and his speech was motivated by a revolutionary zeal:

‘Gentlemen, he said, Preston are all professionals, but if you refuse to legalize them they will all be amateurs. We shall all be amateurs, and you cannot prove otherwise’. He then accused his opponents of hypocrisy. He made more than one so-called purist wince when he boldly declared that he was prepared to prove that there were men who had played in Lancashire as professionals who were now figuring in Birmingham as amateurs, and the authorities of Birmingham must be made aware of it (Sanders, 2009, pp.125-126).

The dispute lasted for over two hours and when the result arrived those who in favour of professionalism had won, however, only by 113 votes to 108, nowhere near the two- thirds majority that was required. After a further two months of discussions, delegates again convened at the FA’s Annual General Meeting. On this occasion Dick Gregson of the Lancashire Football Association, recommended that professionalism be legalised,

supported, not surprisingly by Sudell. However, W.H. Jope, a man considered to be a traditional intellectual, from the Birmingham Football Association, would intervene arguing that it was humiliating for amateur football players to have to play with professionals. ‘His speech drew boos and hisses and a furious response from Alcock, and it was clear the balance was now shifting in favour of the pragmatists’ (Sanders, 2009, pp.125-126). However, when the vote came in those who in favour of professionalism had again won, albeit only by 106 to 69, which was still not enough:

‘As a way out of the impasse yet another sub-committee was established, containing Sudell, Jackson, Crump and six others (an all-embracing group) and by the time the delegates met again on 20 July 1885 the opponents of professionalism had thrown in the towel (Sanders, 2009, pp.125-126).

Professionalism in English football would now be legal: a decision that had been reached by a ‘complex alliance of forces’ (Eagleton, 2007, p.122) – an alliance led by Alcock and Sudell. This decision would represent the arrival of ideological hegemony in English football, i.e. ‘the coordination of different interests and their ideological expression, whereby a mixture of various ideological components had been transformed into a collective will ... a differentiated whole’ (Sanders, 2009, pp.125-126). In this sense the legalisation of professionalism had allowed Marxist class confrontation to be replaced by a sense harmony in a way that could assist:

‘the Marxist end of a unified community. This was so because different ideologies maintained a state of conflict until one of them, or a combination of some prevailed. The result was an intellectual, moral, economic, and political unity of aims with the semblance of universality’ (Freeden, 2003, p.20).

Those who had campaigned so vociferously for the legalisation of professionalism had achieved a substantial victory. At the next meeting of the FA the vote would finally come back in favour of legalisation, this time by a substantial majority of 35 to 5. By the start of the 1885-86 season a new regulation was introduced. ‘Professionals shall be allowed to compete in all Cups, County and Inter-association matches … after which followed the necessary qualifications. Irksome though these things were they did not obscure the main principle’ (Dougan and Young, 1975, p.25). The dawning of football’s modern age had begun. ‘It was an historic victory, and one that had been driven above all by Billy Sudell’s determination’ (Sanders, 2009, p.127). The momentous decision by the FA to legalise professionalism thus reflected ‘not just the world view of the ruler, but

the relations between governing and dominated classes in society as a whole’ (Eagleton, 2009, p.122).

In late 1885, the life of the professional player would no longer be characterised by subterfuge and secrecy. He would no be longer ‘a wolf in the fold’ (Gibson and Pickford, 1905, p.88). However, there would still be members of the FA who would detest the events of 1885. As a consequence, during 1886 and 1887, regular football matches would be arranged between the gentleman and the players, which in the vernacular of this period translated into amateurs versus professionals. The last vestiges of the FA’s anti-professional ideology would still be visible through their attempts to make ‘the pros look like pros (still assumed to be a negative term), by making them wear dark blue jerseys … (while) the gentlemen were clad in spotless white shirts’ (Sanders, 2009, p.130). These attempts would soon abate and after only a few matches the amateur versus professional football match would be no more. The:

‘boundless energies of proletarian football could not be confined in the same way as cricket. The surge of working-class teams emerging from the North and the Midlands was simply too overwhelming and footballers were just not prepared to tolerate the same petty humiliations’ (Sanders, 2009, p.130).

By 1886 the dramatic shift in power on the football field would be reflected at the headquarters of the FA too. During 1884 and 1885 membership of the FA would still dominated by the amateurs from the South. But at the FA’s Annual General Meeting in late 1886 the Lancashire football clubs would perform a dramatic:

‘coup, organizing themselves into a caucus and sweeping the board at elections. The Southerners fought back at a special meeting a couple of weeks later and a compromise (ideological hegemony once again) was eventually reached which involved restructuring and expanding the FA Committee. But when the dust settled the Southern dominance had gone for ever and the Northern and Midlands clubs were in the majority’ (Sanders, 2009, p.130).

Chapter Three: 1888-1901 Introduction

During this particular period English football’s configuration as a two-dimensional industrial capitalist society characterised by legal, unrestricted professionalism would gradually be eroded, first, in 1888, with the formation of the FL – an organisation ‘founded by … shopkeepers, minor government officials, small businessmen …so that allied clubs may make more money than they already do’ (Harding, 1991, p.1), secondly, in 1893 with their introduction of the retain-and-transfer system (Harding, 1971, p.4) and, thirdly, in 1900 with the FA’s introduction of the maximum wage of £4 a week (Harding, 1971, p.27). While the form and purpose of the FL’s ideological domination and the inability of the proletarian professional players to defy it will be explained with reference to Mannheim’s theory of the sociology of knowledge and Habermas’ concept of the bourgeois public sphere, the form and purpose of the FA’s ideological domination will be analysed with reference to the Marx and Engel’s theory of ideology.

This period of English football will be compared and contrasted with the cotton industry from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century – a transitional period for this society whereby its configuration as a two-dimensional society would gradually be eroded as a result of the government’s reluctance to adhere to the natural law ideology of the eighteenth century. A decision by the government that would be predicated on the notion that in order to further economic and productive expansion it would be necessary to separate ‘the economy from social obligations (Butt, 1971, p.99) – in short, a denial of social responsibility’ (Hearn, 1978, p.69). In response the workers would develop ‘alternative arrangements and parallel institutions … designed to maintain social obligations’ (Hearn, 1978, p.129).

In English football the introduction of the retain-and-transfer system and the maximum wage would forge an:

‘alliance between the middle class (FL) and the landed aristocracy (FA) (that would enable) this structure of power to develop upon a complex interpenetration of aristocratic privilege and commercial and industrial wealth. One important factor that would prevent a serious break in the alliance (would

be their) shared opposition to the (proletarian professional players) and their associations (the AFPU)’ (Hearn, 1978, p.137).

By introducing the maximum wage the FA would be afforded the:

‘powers to investigate League clubs and their finances, powers that it would (now) use with all the determination of a body inherently opposed to professionalism’(Harding, 1991, p.29).

Within this context the form, purpose and ability of the FA to impose their maximum wage over the professional players will be explained with reference to Marx and Engels’ theory of ideology as depicted in The German Ideology. For Marx and Engels ideology provided:

‘an inverted mirror-image of the material world, further distorted by the fact that the material world was itself subject to dehumanizing social relations under capitalism. The role of ideology was to smooth over those contradictions by making them appear necessary, normal and congruous’ (Freeden, 2003, p.5).

Conversely, the formation of the FL in 1888 would mark the birthplace of competitive League football with twelve clubs combining to play regular fixtures against one another (Metcalf, 2013, p.9). It would not take long, however, before ‘egalitarianism was to be quickly snuffed out in pursuit of profits’ (Metcalf, 2013, p.9) with ‘capitalism gradually becoming allied to industrialism’ (Szymanski and Smith, 1997, p.1). For it was ‘only when capitalism became associated with industrialism … (that) the two-dimensional quality of social life (would be) undermined’ (Hearn, 1978, p.140). William McGregor, founder of the FL, deemed its formation as a necessary measure in preventing ‘professional football as a commercial venture … (from) destroying itself’ (Harding, 2009, pp.12, 14).

Applying Mannheim’s theory of the sociology of knowledge in this context the FL can be viewed as an intelligentsia, a ‘group whose special task it (was) to provide an interpretation of the world for their society’ (Freeden, 2003, p.14). Their introduction of the retain-and-transfer system in 1893 would signify that once a player signed by a club he was ‘tied to his club for as long as the club wanted him (and even beyond that point)’ (Harding, 1991, p.4). The FL would justify this transfer system on the basis that it would enable ‘smaller clubs to be sure of keeping their assets … (thus maintaining) the size

and shape of the League’ (Harding, 1991, pp.2, 4). In accordance with Mannheim’s theory, the FL’s transfer system will be initially considered as a ‘total conception of ideology… an all-encompassing view of the world adopted by a given group, always reflecting the general ideas and thought systems of an historical period’ (Freeden, 2003, p.14).

However, as a consequence the professional players would now be unable:

‘to negotiate a new contract on anything like equal terms with their employers – hardly a situation in which a player could make demands for better conditions. In 1885 … the player had been free as the next man to sell his labour to the highest bidder; yet by 1900 he was being described as a bonded slave, a chattel, no better than a piece of merchandise’ (Harding, 2009, pp.13-15).

Faced with the ignominy of a gradually eroding two-dimensional industrial capitalist society, a politicised society where the organisation of work was expressive of social obligations and relationships, the professional players would seek to develop ‘alternative arrangements and parallel institutions … designed to maintain social obligations’ (Hearn, 1978, pp.69, 129) in English football. Thus, in 1897 the professional players in their defiance of the FA and the FL would begin to think of:

‘protecting themselves, of speaking out to suggest alternative methods of running League football. In order to clarify their position in a rapidly changing industry the first players’ organisation was formed. This union was called The Association Football Players’ Union (AFPU) with various top players (setting) out to forge a negotiating link based on equality of status with the Football League and the FA’ (Harding, 2009, p.15).

The AFPU believed that the FL’s retain-and-transfer system had been responsible for destroying ‘the old bond of friendly feeling between (players) and club managers … (which had) brought the latter to regard (the former) as chattels to be bought and sold. (Thus the AFPU) outlined an alternative transfer system’ (Harding, 1991, pp.18, 20). In doing so, I believe, the actions of the AFPU can be viewed as a tacit attempt to gain membership of the intelligentsia in English football as according to Mannheim ‘members of an intelligentsia (are) recruited from a … varied social background. They were no longer associated with a determinate closed body’ (Freeden, 2003, p.14). The FL, however, would be unreceptive to the AFPU’s efforts and in 1901 the Union would

disappear ‘so swiftly that it might never have existed. Its achievements were minimal, its membership never more than 50 per cent of League players. It was a sickly child and was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave’ (Harding, 1991, p.32).

The League:

‘growing in strength from year to year, was arrogant enough to feel it knew all the answers … governed by men who knew something of club management and who conducted their business without the unsolicited intervention of the Players Union’ (Harding, 1991, p.31).

Once professionalism was ‘legal, life became a little easier for the administrators. Players, however, found that all was not honey. They were subject to the severe discipline that ruled the commercial world of the nineteenth century’ (Dougan and Young, 1975, p.25).

In this chapter the professionalisation of English football in 1885, the influence of William Sudell, the gradual erosion of English football as a two-dimensional industrial capitalist society, the denial of social responsibility created by the FL’s retain-and- transfer system, the FA’s maximum wage and the revolutionary acts of defiance committed by the proletarian professional players will be compared and contrasted with the mechanisation and industrialisation of the productive process of the cotton industry during the late eighteenth century, the impact of Richard Arkwright, the government’s decision to further economic and productive expansion through the denial of social responsibility, the gradually erosion of the cotton industry as a two-dimensional industrial capitalist society and the attempts of Robert Owen, factory reformer and cotton mill manager, to improve the lot of the cotton worker through the passing of legislation in Parliament.

• Marx and Engels’ theory of ideology as exposed in The German Ideology will help to explain the form and purpose of the FA’s maximum wage while Mannheim’s theory of the sociology of knowledge and Habermas’ concept of a bourgeois public sphere will help to explain the form and purpose of the FL’s retain-and-transfer system and the inability of the professional players to establish a society based upon social responsibility.

While the FA had been formed by a ‘group of men drawn from the upper echelons of society … the Football League (had been) founded by a very different group of men’ (Harding, 2009, p.12), i.e. the bourgeoisie. In 1888 the skilful professional player would dominate English football and with the extreme competitiveness that was to accompany football matches played in the FA Cup it was of no surprise that football was increasingly dragged into the commercial domain. As a consequence of the Companies Acts all professional football clubs were now permitted to become limited companies. This transition would irrevocably transform the relationship between football club and football player, employer and employee.

McGregor, of Aston Villa football club, architect of the FL, had been concerned that professional football as a commercial enterprise was acting against its best interests. For him professional clubs had been too focused on competing against one another, to attract the best football players, to entice the biggest crowds, with absolutely no forethought for the finances of their competitors. Fixtures between football clubs were disorganised with lesser clubs frequently being faced with cancelled matches due to bigger clubs organising more lucrative contests. As the FA Cup was based around the knock-out system those who exited the competition at the initial stages, more often than not, had nothing else to look forward to during the year.

In March 1888 McGregor would send a circular to the leading clubs in the country detailing his plans for the formation of a new League and to his surprise the response was encourgaging. Subsequently, on 17 April it was decided that a League would be formed comprising of twelve clubs, including, Preston North End, Bolton Wanderers, Accrington and Burnley. The League would prove to be a shrewd and innovative scheme, a money-spinning product, increasing in size from twelve football clubs in 1888 to thirty-six in 1900. In addition clubs would pledge their allegiance to the patriarchal FA in a bid to prevent anything from inhibiting the playing of prearranged matches. Although there were numerous amateur football players participating in the League football, the League as an organisation dealt, predominantly, with the professional aspect of the game:

‘Though never openly inimical to the national body … in the one or two instances in which the relations between the two have been strained the League has, by virtue of its inherent strength and prominent position, quietly and stolidly had its way. In regards to the Laws of the Game, the discipline of the game, and the general regulations as to the conduct of affairs the League has

invariably admitted the right of the Association to control but in regard to its internal machinery it has always cried hands off. Thanks, however, to the broad spirit in which the leaders on both sides have dealt with debatable matters, the relations between the Association and the League have been maintained on a friendly basis’ (Gibson and Pickford, 1905, pp.100-101).

While interactions between the FA and the FL would remain cordial, the FL’s exponential growth into a strong, powerful and autonomous organisation had naturally dampened the FA’s already diminished role as ‘patricians, heirs to the doctrine of ‘leadership’, and so lawgivers by at least semi-divine right’ (Young, 1969, p.119). For Mannheim:

‘with the rise of middle-class society the old monological world view (i.e. that football would, forever be a sport, and not a business), of the traditional order (had) disappeared forever. An authoritarian priestly and political caste, which once confidently monopolised knowledge, (had) now yielded ground to a free intelligentsia’ (Eagleton, 2007, p.108).

Mannheim would state that as societies developed and ‘social mobility increased, members of an intelligentsia began to be recruited from a more varied social background’ (Freeden, 2003, p.14). Consequently, the intelligentsia would no longer be connected to a: ‘determinate and closed body … (as) they provided an increasingly independent, non-subjective, interpretation of the world’ (Freeden, 2003, pp.13-14). Accordingly, the FL, in the role of free intelligentsia, had interpreted that English football as a ‘commercial venture was in danger of destroying itself’ (Harding, 1991, p.1). The introduction of the retain-and-transfer system in 1893 was viewed as measure to prevent this. The FL would justify their transfer system on the basis that it prevented the professional players from making ‘excessive financial demands (to) clubs, (who) fearful of losing star players, (would be) blackmailed into paying whatever had been demanded … (with) many … (bankrupting) themselves in the process’ (Harding, 1991, p.4). This was, however, a:

‘convenient fiction … as it had been club managements that had created the atmosphere in which such mercenaries had been able to flourish. Clubs … in their anxiety to fill grounds and make money, had broken whatever rules had

then existed and in the process had reduced the game to a shambles. Nevertheless, the myth of greedy, grasping player would prove a powerful and convenient one’ (Harding, 1991, p.4).

While Marx would denounce the social conditions under capitalism as the basis of ideological illusion, Mannheim believed that it was a facet of any social setting to effect the activities of individuals and, moreover, that knowledge was ‘a co-operative process of group life … societies had many different social groups and class environments; therefore, such multiplicity of ways of thinking could produce more than one ideology’ (Freeden, 2003, pp.12-13). On the surface, therefore, the decision to introduce the retain- and-transfer system could be viewed as a manifestation of the co-operative process of group life of English football. The FL hoped that if it could somehow control the players then it could spread talent evenly throughout the League, preventing one club from achieving all-out dominance. ‘But how to secure such control? Fortunately for the League, the FA had, unwittingly, created a perfect mechanism’ (Harding, 1991, p.4). As has been mentioned, the FA had only accepted professionalism if they could in someway control it. In order to guarantee that the professional players stayed under their control, the FA would pass a regulation that would require all football players to register each and every year. Players would not be able to play in competitions under the FA’s remit if they refused to do so. However, The FL, understood that in order to acquire the necessary control they required they would have to ‘go one step further (and introduce) the retain and transfer system’ (Harding, 1991, p.4).

At the beginning the FL had principally been a North/Midlands organisation. However, it would soon become inclusive of football clubs from all over the country until there were no football club of means or aspiration that could afford to persist outside of it. Becoming a member of the FL would bring with it substantial benefits: a steady income resulting from a certain, guaranteed number of football matches; competitive matches between equally matched teams thus maintaining interest during the whole of the football season as well as procedures and policies intended to bind football clubs to one another for the purpose of mutual protection. The FL in this regard was:

‘a cartel, which rapidly assumed monopoly powers; only the Southern League offered any sort of competition over the years but even it was eventually absorbed. For the newly recognized professional player the rise of the League proved to be a blessing and a curse’ (Harding, 1991, p.2).

Initially, the professional players would not be ostensibly opposed to the establishment of the FL, rather they perceived its formation to be of great benefit. They desired the reassurance of fixed employment, a steady wage and pleasant working conditions. The League, at least on the surface, seemed to offer all of these things. By 1900, however, the professional players were not so sure. The FL would contend that for the League to succeed it would be necessary for talent to be spread evenly throughout all of the clubs. With the results of matches unpredictable and the enjoyment of such competitiveness remaining at a constant high, the FL believed that they could create a ‘phenomenally successful competition’ (Harding, 1991, p.3) or in the words of Mannheim a utopia, a ‘vision of a future or perfect society’ (Freeden, 2003, p.13).

For Mannheim such a utopia could be developed by free-floating intellectuals such as McGregor. Fundamental to this belief was Mannheim’s concept of relationism, which:

‘mooted three things. First, it affirmed that ideas were only comprehensible if we appreciated their mutual interdependence. Second, that holistic framework offered the possibility of a social standpoint from which different relationist understandings are assessed, and from which truths and knowledge of the real world could be extracted … (and) third, it was only with the development of the total conception of ideology that the sociology of knowledge could surface’ (Freeden, 2003, pp.15-16).

For Mannheim:

‘only in a rapidly and profoundly changing intellectual world could ideas and values, formerly regarded as fixed, have been subjected to a thoroughgoing criticism. To-day, there are too many points of view of equal value and prestige, each showing the relativity of the other, to permit us to take any one position and to regard it as impregnable and absolute. Through this effort the one- sidedness of our own point of view is counteracted, and conflicting intellectual positions may actually come to supplement one another. Knowledge, as seen in the light of the total conception of ideology in its relational concept is not at all identical with illusion. Relationism signifies merely that all the elements of meaning in a given situation have reference to one another and derive their significance from their reciprocal interrelationship in a given frame of thought’ (Mannheim, 1954, pp.70-76).

Subsequently, it was to Mannheim’s concept of relationism that attention would be drawn. While the FL were happy to posit the self-aggrandising notion that the formation of the League and the introduction of the retain-and-transfer system were to be of benefit of all in English football it would not take long before such views would draw the attention of dissenting voices. While the FL would give the impression that the retain- and-transfer system was a total conception of knowledge in reality its creation had not taken into account the ideas and beliefs of the professional players. After concerns were raised by a subsection of players their views would be ignored. The FL had thus denied the professional players entry into the intelligentsia – an occurrence that would negate the possibility of the retain-and-transfer system representing a total conception of knowledge as their reluctance to modify it would prevent a unified sociology of knowledge from transpiring. Throughout this period the FL would repeatedly deny the professional players a platform from which they could voice their concerns about the transfer system, thus blocking the extraction of truth and knowledge as it pertained to English football. Instead I postulate that the retain-and-transfer system be viewed as a calculated move by the FL to exercise domination over the professional players, a decision that would have severe consequences for English football’s configuration as a two-dimensional society.

In this respect I suggest that this period of English football conforms to Mannheim’s assertions in Ideology and utopia that:

‘in our contemporary social and intellectual plight, it is nothing less than shocking to discover that those persons who claim to have discovered an absolute are usually the same people who also pretend to be superior to the rest. To find people in our day attempting to pass off to the world and recommending to others some nostrum of the absolute which they claim to have discovered is merely a sign of the loss of and the need for the intellectual and moral certainty. But it is not primarily the man of action who seeks the absolute and immutable, but rather it is he who wishes to induce others to hold on to the status quo because he feels comfortable and smug under those conditions as they are. Those who are satisfied with the existing order of things are only too likely to set up the chance situation of the moment as absolute and eternal in order to have something stable to hold on to an to minimize the hazardousness of life. This cannot be done, however, without resorting to all sorts of romantic notions and myths. Thus we are faced with the curiously appalling trend of modern thought, in which the absolute which was once a means of entering into

communion with the divine, has now become an instrument used by those who profit from it, to distort, pervert, and conceal the meaning of the present’ (Mannheim, 1954, pp.77-78).

Throughout this period it would be the FL’s perceived discovery of the absolute to which the professional players’ ire would be directed. For as soon as professionalism was legalised in 1885 there would be demands for the creation of an organisation that could safeguard the welfare of the professional players. As English football grew in popularity League clubs were able to generate more and more money and as a consequence the majority would alter their constitutions by becoming limited companies. This constitutional change would give ‘an impetus to the more politically alert among the players to consider the advantages of unionization’ (Dougan and Young, 1975, p.44). In 1870 the Education Act had made education compulsory throughout the British Isles and in 1871 the Trade Union Act had permitted trade unions for the first time. Through ‘the great period of expansion trade unionism … during the last decade of the century … when a greater degree of literacy began to become apparent among the working class, and also when football entered its first era of industrialization’ (Dougan and Young, 1975, p.44) the professional players would form the AFPU.

Initially, as has been mentioned, the implementation of the retain-and-transfer system in 1893 would not prove to be of significant concern to the players. At this time there were still alternative leagues to which disgruntled players could escape and earn a decent living. However, as the League expanded its reach those avenues would become increasingly inaccessible. Consequently, players would contemplate formulating alternate approaches to running the League – approaches incongruent to those of the FL. In order that they could contribute successfully in these deliberations and to refine their position in an industry that was developing at an intense pace, the AFPU, the inaugural players’ union, would appear in 1897. ‘This new body came to life with a flourish of trumpets, but its prospectus was looked on with cold eyes by the powers that were, especially the clubs that had to pay the piper’ (Gibson and Pickford, 1905, p.123). Not surprisingly it was ‘virtually impossible to find any club with directors who seemed to be prepared to give even moral support to such a scheme’ (Dougan and Young, 1975, p.44).

In this regard the AFPU, as a parallel institution, had been established in direct response to the onset of industrial capitalism in English football and to the subsequent denial of social responsibility arising from the FL’s retain-and-transfer system. The Union would

seek to identify and implement alternative arrangements to running the League – most pertinently the formation of an alternate transfer system. However, the FA, the FL, and the clubs would, throughout this period, be impervious to the Union’s advances. For Dougan and Young:

‘what other large-scale industry is there, one might ask, of which the employees’ association was so peremptorily dismissed? It has so often seemed that the last people to be entitled to a say in the running of their affairs have been the professional sportsmen. In football, there are those in authority that presume to know best. But it is only a myth. In amateur sport … matters are dealt with in a democratic basis, with each member of a body entitled to express his views without fear of being discriminated against for having done so. It took a relatively long time for professional players to discover how they could join together for the protection of their interests, and we are still suffering because of this. The prime reason was the fact that the cottage industry nature of football in its earlier phases. Out of this came the determination of club directors and Association and League administrators that players should be kept in their place to which it had pleased God to call them. The idea that a football club was a cooperative venture in which some invested money, some expertise, some enthusiasm, and some (the players) technical skills and know-how, but in which all were entitled to be regarded as equal, would have been considered seditious at one time. So it is that directors and managers – the gaffers and the bosses – and players – the workers – remain in the same relative stations’ (Dougan and Young, 1975, pp.42-43).

In light of this numerous star players from football clubs such as Liverpool and Blackburn Rovers would form the AFPU. Men who were the most famous and celebrated of their generation who had been part of the fabric of the League since its inception in 1888. ‘These men were Bob Holmes and Jimmy Ross of Preston; John Devey of Aston Villa; John Somerville of Bolton Wanderers; Jack Bell of Everton; Hugh McNeill of Sunderland and Harry Wood of Wolves’ (Harding, 1991, p.8). They did not whole heartedly disagree with the imposition of a transfer system rather they believed that there was a fairer system out there that would put paid to players being exchanged like merchandise with no say in their future. Moreover, to the surprise of the AFPU, the FA was equally skeptical about the legitimacy of the FL’s transfer system.

The Union would be cognizant not only of the pain that the retain-and-transfer system was causing its members but also of the FL’s attempt to strike a deal with the Scottish FA in order to make the system mandatory across the border. If successful then such an agreement would prevent players in England from escaping to Scotland to sign for a club without the influence of club directors. The decision to forge a link with the Scottish FA, however, ‘had had the effect of stimulating the professional players in England to take action whereby to safeguard their own interests’ (Harding, 1991, p.8). The AFPU at this time were not intent on threatening the FL with strike action as they hoped to achieve their objective through more peaceful means, i.e. by sharing their concerns with the general public:

‘The Lancashire Daily Post correspondent Abaris was a friend of both Devey and Holmes. The Union therefore granted his paper exclusive rights to report on its affairs. Within weeks of that first meeting, Arabis was able to reveal that meetings had taken place between English and Scottish players with a view to establishing a Scottish branch’ (Harding, 1991, p.9).

In order to explain the Union’s decision to publicise their intentions I will apply Habermas’ concept of the public sphere as discussed in his work, the Structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. For Habermas the public sphere was:

a sphere between civil society and the state, in which critical public discussion of matters of general interest was institutionally guaranteed, the liberal public sphere took shape in the specific historical circumstances of a developing market economy. In its clash with the arcane and bureaucratic practices of the absolutist state, the emergent bourgeoisie gradually replaced a public sphere in which the ruler’s power was merely represented before the people with a sphere in which state authority was publicly monitored through informed and critical discourse by the people’ (Habermas, 1991, p.xi).

Within this context the AFPU in an attempt to establish their civic rights in English football were using the ‘emergence of a free press’ (Finlayson, 2005, p.10) to guarantee their ‘freedom of association and of expression’ (Harding, 1991, p.9), which would give ‘rise to physical spaces’ (Harding, 1991, p.9), i.e. Annual General Meetings at their Liverpool Headquarters) (Harding, 1991, p.16). In these physical spaces members of the Union could ‘enter into free public discussion’ (Finlayson, 2005, p.10). This public

sphere would enable members of the Union to unite ‘in a common aim (whereby) a shared culture (could develop, permitting) participants to discover and to express their needs and interests and to form a conception of the common good’ (Finlayson, 2005, p.11). The AFPU hoped that as their opinions pertaining to the management of professional football diffused throughout society, via the media, then ‘public opinion (would begin) to function as a check on the legitimacy of the powers of unrepresentative and closed government, i.e. the FL. By checking whether (their) laws and policies, i.e. the retain-and-transfer system, were in the common good’ (Finlayson, 2005, pp.10-11).

Habermas asserted that when:

‘private people engaged in rational-critical debate, there came about … public agreement. The formal subjective freedom of individuals consists in their having and expressing their own private judgments, opinions, and recommendations on affairs of state. This freedom is collectively manifested as what is called public opinion. The function (therefore) of the public sphere … (was) the subjection of domination to reason (thus) ... the … public sphere attained its political function’ (Habermas, 1991, p.117, 127).

However, while Habermas’ concept of the public sphere was to perfectly surmise the attempts of the AFPU to assert their civic rights, his charting of the breakup and subsequent deterioration of the public sphere, would neatly illustrate the difficulties the Union would face in achieving their goals. Habermas stated that:

‘along the path from a public critically reflecting on its culture to one that merely consumes it, the pubic sphere … which at one point could still be distinguished from that in the political realm, has lost its special character. For the culture propagated by the mass media is a culture of integration. The public sphere assumes advertising functions. The more it can be deployed as a vehicle for political and economic propaganda, the more it becomes unpolitical as a whole and pseudo-privatized. The model of the bourgeois pubic sphere presupposed strict separation of the public from the private realm in such a way that the public sphere, made up of private people gathered together as a public and articulating the needs of society with the state, was itself considered part of the private realm. To the extent that the public and private became intermeshed realms, this model became inapplicable. In this intermediate sphere the sectors of society that had been absorbed by the state and the sectors of the state that

had been taken over by society intermeshed without involving any rational- critical political debate on the part of the private people. The public was largely relieved of this task. The public as such is included only sporadically in this circuit of power, and even then it is brought in only to contribute its acclamation’ (Habermas, 1991, pp.175-176).

In this regard English football journals such as the Athletic News would provide the FL with the necessary acumen to break up the public sphere in English football, as they published views sympathetic to it (Harding, 1991, p.30). These publications would provide the FL with a platform from which the proclamations of the AFPU published in the Lancashire Daily Post, i.e. about the grave injustices of the retain-and-transfer system (Harding, 1991, p.18) could be countered. These publications were distinctly apathetic to the:

‘rights of footballers as employees. Often, in fact there are outbreaks of hysteria when players begin to look even like mentioning their rights. Not long ago journalists were disrupting the provincial papers by selective industrial action. At the same time the players of one famous team, bereft of a manager … nearly took a mild form of protest by suggesting stopping training. About half of hell was let loose on the theme of players’ duties, responsibilities, and so on … Outside the industry of football the idea of paternalism is practically defunct. Inside it, this is by no means the case’ (Dougan and Young, 1975, pp.35-36).

As this confrontation continued the Union rather than push for the abolition of the retain-and-transfer system would be restrained in their demands. They would ask that any dialogue concerning the transfer of a player from one club to another be discussed, solely, between the player and the purchasing club. There should be no instance when the player was excluded from such a discussion. In April 1897 the AFPU would present such a demand, along with numerous others, to the FA. If the AFPU were to survive and prosper it needed the FA’s consent – the AFPU were confident, as they were aware that the FA was equally perturbed by the FL’s retain-and-transfer system. However, the AFPU were to be disappointed. The FA would not only dismiss their demands but also state that unless they amended them they would have no choice but to deny the legitimacy of the Union. Incredibly the AFPU they had confused the FA’s contempt for the retain-and-transfer system for the belief that it supported the Union.

The FA’s position on this matter had resulted from their objection to the inclusion of the Union’s statement ‘to protect the interests of members against undue or arbitrary measures adopted or to be adopted by the FA, The Football League or any other recognized authority’ (Harding, 1991, pp.12-13). The FA would allege that this avowal had been hostile to its authority as they proudly asserted that it was ‘strong enough to deal with any difficulty that might arise in football, and that the invocation of the law to settle disputes should be a last resort’ (Gibson and Pickford, 1905, p.123). This ill-fated demand by the AFPU would lead the ‘controlling authorities – Associations, League, and the clubs − (to note to) themselves that, by playing their cards rights they could defeat the threat of a Union’ (Dougan and Young, 1975, p.44). It was at this point that the future of the Union appeared to be highly uncertain. The FL would still be determined to amalgamate the Southern League into the League structure in order to prevent players from deserting, however, a deal had not yet been reached. As a consequence the Southern League still posed a serious threat to the dominance of the FL.

In 1898 football clubs affiliated to the FL would be in financial turmoil while those in the Southern League were flourishing. Consequently, a host of star players would be lured away by the prospect of earning lucrative wages. Regrettably for the AFPU, the most distinguished of those players had been fundamental to their formation:

‘First … Harry Wood of Wolves whom Southampton signed in May for a reputed £100 a year increase in wages … in July Jack Bell left Everton for London. How, it was asked, could Bell, the Union chairman, complain about the morality of the system when he appeared willing to be sold ‘like a chattel’ provided he received a substantial lump himself?’ (Harding, 1991, p.16).

In July 1898, Holmes of Preston speaking in the Lancashire Daily Post would proclaim that the AFPU was on the verge of disbanding as the Union had been unable to obtain the objectives it had set out to achieve. With so many of its members absconding the outlook for the AFPU appeared to be bleak:

‘With Cameron, Jack Bell, Robertson, Holt, Stewart, Storrier, Meecham of Everton as well as Hartley and Bradshaw of Liverpool gone, our centre has lost its strength. Liverpool was our headquarters, you know, and our registered offices were there. At first players all over the country seized on the idea with the eagerness of a child for a new toy. But now there no longer comes any

addition to our membership and those who do remain members seem to have entirely to have lost interest in the concern. If the players do not continue their membership – and it is not certain that they will – well, then, there remains nothing but the name of the National Association Football Players’ Union’ (Harding, 1991, pp.16-17).

However, in August, rather than concede defeat, the Union would seek to address its fallibilities. For those who remained it was evident that they had expected too much and achieved too little. Thus, Charles Saer, Secretary of the Union, ‘trained and educated beyond board school level’ (Harding, 1991, p.19), a free-floating intellectual who would provide an ‘independent, non-subjective interpretation of English football’ (Freeden, 2003, p.14) would declare in the Lancashire Daily Post, that the retain-and-transfer system had been:

‘a mass of inconsistency and injustice. The object of the transfer system is to prevent competition and to give each club the power to monopolize the services of its players ... this monopoly is in direct contravention to the rules of the FA’ (Harding, 1991, p.18).

He confirmed that the system had ended the friendly relations that had existed between player and manager and caused the latter to look upon the former as an asset that could be traded for financial gain:

‘What wonder that the loyalty of players to their clubs is diminishing in quantity year by year? We have to thank the transfer system for bringing us down to the level of beasts in the market place. The club can hold the player for sale for an indefinite period without doing anything to maintain him … the league system in its present form must go!’ (Harding, 1991, p.18).

As a result of Saer’s proclamations the remaining members of the AFPU would be imbued with a revolutionary passion that would culminate in the Union proposing the installation of an alternate transfer system in October 1898. This alternate system suggested that the price of a player should be derived from the amount his current club believed him to worth in relation to wages paid. However, while this was transpiring the FL and the Southern League were reentering into dialogue about the possibility of a merger. Not surprisingly Saer opposed such a state affairs as he believed it would lead to the total ‘hemming-in of players … (as) men would be absolutely tied and their liberty

worse restricted than the case now’ (Harding, 1991, p.20). He wished therefore to illustrate his proposals to the FL prior to any such agreement being made. Thus he would write a letter to the Lancashire Daily Post affirming that the retain-and-transfer system contravened FA regulations. The editor of the Post affirmed:

‘the fact that one hears no protests from (players) as to the transfer matters induces the impression that existing conditions are agreeable to the general body of players. But when men like … Charles Saer and others, each speaking for a wider constituency, utterly condemn the systems it becomes apparent that though on the surface there may seem contentment … beneath the veneer of indifference, a deep-seated dissatisfaction’ (Harding, 1991, pp.21-22).

Saer hoped to convey the notion that the FL’s reluctance to change the transfer system was symptomatic of organisation determined to ‘stifle debate, (and) to pretend that all was well in their domain’ (Harding, 1991, pp.21-22). He was adamant that once the FA were aware that the FL were contravening their own regulations they would encourage the FL into altering the retain-and-transfer system. This, however, would not transpire and instead his allegations would draw the ire of Charles Sutcliffe of the FL’s Management Committee who would use the Lancashire Daily Post, the Union’s own mouthpiece, to counter Saer’s assertions. Sutcliffe affirmed that he held no ill-will towards the AFPU and that he perceived their efforts to be of great benefit to not only the players but also to English football as a whole. He stated that there was ‘plenty of room for the players’ union but to set it up in antagonism to the League and the Association is to court death and certain failure’ (Harding, 1991, p.23).

Saer was now acutely aware that his proposals were not going to be accepted by those League clubs whose management were in the business of making money – the alternate transfer system would ultimately have dampened their prowess in this regard. Saer had failed to achieve his ultimate goal of revolutionising the transfer system and soon after, in late 1898, he would resign from the Union altogether.

As has previously been discussed the FL in the role of intelligentsia had offered the retain-and-transfer system as a total conception of knowledge – a Weltanschauung. However, Saer’s resignation would signify the FL’s unwillingness to permit Saer, and the AFPU, entry into the intelligentsia of English football. Their rejection of his alternate transfer system would confirm the FL’s retain-and-transfer system as being incompatible with Mannheim’s total conception of knowledge as their reluctance to

modify it had prevented a unified sociology of knowledge from transpiring. Not soon after, John Cameron would replace Charles Saer as Secretary of the Union with Bob Holmes once again taking up the position of Chairman. Holmes thought the function of the Union was to act as a regulator rather than a political body determined to overthrow the FL’s retain-and-transfer system. Holmes considered the restructuring of the transfer system to be responsibility of the FA. However, to the surprise of the Union, John Clegg of the FA, was determined to confront the FL on the issue of the transfer system. Consequently, in early 1899 he would convene a meeting of representatives of the FL, the Southern League and the AFPU. The FL, however, would remain obstinate in their determination to prevent any alterations to the current retain-and-transfer system. In response Clegg would set up a commission of the FA who would report that the incumbent transfer system was not only shameful but also incompatible with the FA’s regulations:

‘The commission (would make) two recommendations – that the present rules be amended so that players for whom a fee had already been paid could be sold again, but at a fee no higher than the original one; second, that in future, no transfer fees of more than £10 be paid. It appeared certain that a grand collision was imminent. The Lancashire Daily Post announced: Breakers Ahead! But outright war never occurred’ (Harding, 2003, p.26).

However, the FL and the Southern League would refuse to sanction the FA’s recommendations. Sutcliffe had successfully refuted Saer’s proposals and now he hoped to do the same to the FA’s. He suggested that in order to prevent the last vestiges of sport from being purged from the English game that the FA rather than focus on the retain-and-transfer system should direct their antipathy towards the issue of wages and the creation of a system ‘whereby the paying of a players £10 a week throughout the year would become an impossibility’ (Harding, 1991, p.27). Sutcliffe was hoping to communicate to the FA that if the wages of players were regulated then the more financially, powerful football clubs would be prevented from cherry-picking the lesser clubs’ star players, thus maintaining a healthy and competitive League. That way ‘the social unity (of English football) could be maintained and enhanced’ (Freeden, 2003, p.5). If the FA consented then the FL could continue to impose their retain-and-transfer system, while the FA’s concerns for the transfer system could be alleviated through the introduction of their own legislation.

Consequently, the FA in May 1900 would introduce a maximum wage of £4 a week. They would assert that its purpose was to maintain the essence of true sport in English football; however, its true purpose was to control and dominate the professional players in a manner that they had failed to achieve from 1883 to 1885 through the imposition of rule 15. I suggest that the maximum wage be viewed as an ideological illusion employed by the FA in order ‘to exercise control and domination; indeed, to manufacture history according to (their own) interests’ (Freeden, 2003, p.6). In this respect the FA were providing an ‘inverted mirror-image … a camera obscura (of English football) further distorted by the fact that (it) was itself subject to dehumanizing social relations under capitalism’ (Freeden, 2003, p.5), i.e. the FL’s retain-and-transfer system. The FA’s objective was to make the maximum wage ‘appear as necessary, normal, and congruous (in order that) social unity could be maintained and enhanced’ (Freeden, 2003, p.5). The FA hoped that they could convince the professional players, i.e. the ‘subservient class – the proletariat (that the maximum wage) … was a good idea … (and) that such dehumanizing work (shaped by the retain-and-transfer system and the maximum wage was) an inevitable part of the industrial order’ (Freeden, 2003, p.5).

However, over the next sixty years the professional players and their Union representatives would never ‘accept such an arbitrary curb on (the) rights (of) working men’ (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p.14). They would endeavour, through their defiance of the maximum wage, to eventually ‘unmask and demystify (its) dissimulative nature (in order to) expose the false aspirations of its promoters and install instead a set of wholesome social practices that (would provide) the empirical basis of true social consciousness’ (Freeden, 2003, p.7), i.e. legal, unrestricted professionalism. For the AFPU the FA had represented their last hope for coercing the FL into removing the retain-and-transfer system, however, their decision to introduce the maximum wage in 1900 had put paid to that hope.

The challenge now for the AFPU was to maintain its presence in English football at a time when interest in the Union’s affairs was diminishing and its ability to act as a legitimate opposition to the FL and FA had been severely hampered. After Saer’s departure the Union in its current guise would be no more. In the following months and years three explanations would be postulated for the Union’s failures. First, that there had been no ‘real bond of union among the players … (they) were too disunited’ (Gibson and Pickford, 1905, p.124), secondly, they had been unable to convey their message to a subsection of the players to whom a large majority had been completely unaware of their existence and, thirdly, while the FA, the FL and the clubs had been

adept at using the newspapers as a method with which to disclose their beliefs to the wider public, the AFPU had never quite been able to use the media to their advantage. For example, ‘a season or two back (the AFPU) made … Arabis their press mouthpiece; but at the time he was shut up in proud Preston … and consequently much of his excellent work for the pros was never seen’ (Harding, 1991, p.32).

In conclusion, the controlling authorities had played their cards right and defeated the threat of the Union. The chairmen and managers of the clubs, the organic intellectuals from the previous period, 1885 to 1888, who had fought so vociferously for the legalisation of professionalism, were now traditional intellectuals – intellectuals who were ‘once organic, but (were) now no longer so; idealist philosophers (who) served the middle class well in (their) revolutionary heyday, but (were) now a marginal embarrassment’ (Eagleton, 2007, p.120). Throughout this period, the FL had allowed the ‘old land-owning class, (the FA to preserve their) position of virtual monopoly’ (Eagleton, 2007, p.123) while forcing them to relinquish their economic supremacy’ (Eagleton, 2007, p.123) through the introduction of the retain-and-transfer system. The FA, would, however, be able to retain its ‘politico-intellectual supremacy’ (Eagleton, 2007, p.123) through the introduction of the maximum wage in 1900 – a feat that over the next sixty years, would cause the FA to be ‘joined to the industrialists, (the FL) by a kind of suture’ (Eagleton, 2007, p.123). For the AFPU, however, all would not be lost, for men of integrity, including Saer, Davey and Cameron, had run the Union. Men of:

‘intelligence and good sense (who) had demonstrated to the many sceptics that professional footballers were not feckless layabouts … such attitudes would, of course, still persist. They were convenient and served a variety of purposes. But a standard had been set; lessons had been learned’ (Harding, 1991, p.32).

• The form and purpose of the government and manufacturing class’ predominant ideology during the late-eighteenth to early-nineteenth century and the ability of the cotton workers to create protective communities, with institutions and organisations designed to maintain social obligations, i.e. the work of factory reformer, Robert Owen, will be explained with reference to Mannheim’s theory of the sociology of knowledge, Habermas’ concept of a public sphere, Marx and Engels’ theory of ideology, and the natural law ideology of the eighteenth century.

Friedrich Engels, in The Condition of the Working Class in England, would state that:

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‘the history of the proletariat in England begins … with the invention of the steam-engine and of machinery for working cotton. These inventions gave rise … to an industrial revolution, a revolution which altered the whole of civil society’ (Engels, 1993, p.15).

In 1764, weaver James Hargreaves of Blackburn, Lancashire, would create the spinning jenny that would enable a solitary worker to perform the work of several workers employing traditional methods. Hargreaves’ invention would initially be greeted with hostility from cotton spinners concerned for their livelihoods. However, the increase in demand for cotton cloth necessitated an increase in demand for workers to operate the jennies, and as a consequence wages rose and the cotton worker could now earn more than ever before. He would abandon the farm upon which he had subsisted and he would place all his time into the production of cotton cloth. Subsequently, a group of weavers would emerge whose livelihood would now be based solely on a wage – a group who would possess no property of any repute, and who would now be men of the proletariat.

Three years later in 1767, Richard Arkwright of Preston, Lancashire, would invent the spinning throstle, also known as the water frame, which ‘after the steam-engine … (would be thought of as) the most important mechanical invention of the eighteenth century’ (Engels, 1993, p.19). During this time the factory system would become fundamental to the production of cotton cloth – a transformation in the productive process of the cotton industry, which would cause England to enter into a period of continued economic expansion. Thus, the cotton industry would completely transform England from an:

‘obscure, ill-cultivated swamp into a busy, lively region, multiplying its population tenfold in eighty years. The history of South Lancashire (contained) some of the greatest marvels of modern times and all of these miracles (were) the product of the cotton industry’ (Engels, 1993, p.28).

Previously, cotton cloth had been painstakingly produced in the domesticity of the home, however, after Arkwright’s water frame it would now be manufactured by machinery located in the factory/cotton mill. These machines would not be operated by hand, rather they would be driven by a waterwheel and it was this transformation that would enable England to produce cotton cloth more economically and efficiently than anywhere else. It would not be long before cotton produced in Lancashire was being sold all over the world and as a result England would grow prosperous.

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Arkwright would be acutely aware that if he built his first cotton mill in Lancashire it would be subjected to the same resentment as Hargreaves’ spinning jenny. For Marx the:

‘contest between the capitalist and the wage-labourer dated back to the very origin of capital. It raged on throughout the whole of the manufacturing period. But only since the introduction of machinery has the workman fought against the instrument of labour itself, the material embodiment of capital. He revolts against this particular form of the means of production, as being the material basis of the capitalist mode of production. The instrument of labour, when it takes the form of machinery immediately becomes a competitor of the workman himself. The self-expansion of capital by means of machinery is thenceforward directly proportional to the number of the workpeople, whose means of livelihood have been destroyed by that machinery. So soon as the handing of this tool becomes the work of a machine, then, with the use-value, the exchange- value too, of the workman’s labour-power vanishes; the workman becomes unsaleable, like paper money thrown out of currency by legal enactment’ (Marx, 1995, pp.263-264).

After experimenting with various locations in Nottinghamshire in 1771 Arkwright would decide upon the village of Cromford in Derbyshire. Here there was no fear of reprisals, however, there would also be no readily available labour force. ‘Arkwright (would) not only (have) to build a mill, he (would) also (have) to build the first mill village’ (Burton, 2014, p.7). He would build cottages for his workers, the majority of whom were women and children (seven to thirteen years old), who would operate the water frames for fourteen hours a day. Marx asserted that:

‘the adaptation of power to machinery heretofore moved by hand, is almost of daily occurrence. Whenever a process requires a peculiar dexterity and steadiness of hand, it is withdrawn, as soon as possible, from the cunning workman, who is prone to irregularities of many kinds, and it is placed in charge of a peculiar mechanism, so self-regulating that a child can superintend it. The effect of substituting the self-acting mule for the common mule, is to discharge the greater part of the men spinners, and to retain adolescents and children’ (Marx, 1995, pp.265-266).

During this period it would common practice for children to be ‘virtually sold to the millowners by public authorities who were too glad to get them off their hands … what

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this meant for children who came into the hands of brutal or unscrupulous employers can well be imagined’ (Morton, 1962, p.23). Arkwright, however, would take a more benevolent approach, as he preferred to relocate whole families to Cromford rather than employ orphans. Cromford thus represented not just an industrial revolution but a social one too. However, while women and children were accustomed to working long hours producing cotton cloth in the home, they had worked according to their own schedule. ‘Now when the factory bell rang everyone had to be at their place, and there they stayed until the waterwheel was stopped and the machines came to a standstill’ (Burton, 2014, p.7). For those at Cromford, life was hard, however, Arkwright would alleviate the wretchedness of the workers situation by holding annual festivals where he would supply them with food and drink. In 1781 a:

‘visiting doctor noted that Arkwright was … a man of great understanding & to know the way of making his people do their best. This makes them industrious and sober all the rest of the year’ (Hills, 1973, p78).

Arkwright’s success at Cromford would spur him on to expand his cotton empire. He would, however, have to endure considerable restrictions to this aspiration, most notably due to the Calico Acts. Up till now the cotton industry in Lancashire had been given:

‘partial exemption from both the double duty on various types of cotton cloth. In Lancashire, this was accepted by the excise men and charged as printed calico at 3d, a yard, but in London, the excise men considered it must bear the full duty of 6d. a yard. This anomaly had to be resolved (in order) to enable … Arkwright to continue trading’ (Hills, 1973, p.45).

Therefore in 1774 Arkwright would petition Parliament asking that cotton cloth produced exclusively in England should only be subject to the lower duty of 3d. If accepted then the manufacture of cotton would become a ‘flourishing trade … and be the means of employing many thousands of Poor People’ (Hills, 1973, p.46). Arkwright’s avowal would receive no opposition in Parliament and calicos made solely in England were to be taxed at the lower duty of 3d. a yard. Arkwright would now be able to grow his commercial enterprise and in 1777 he would build a cotton mill in Birkacre, Lancashire. However, his initial fears of locating a mill in Lancashire were realised in 1779, when after an economic downfall the weavers from the local area rioted and destroyed the mill. Arkwright would summon the army but it would be too little too late. There were rumours that Cromford would be subjected to the same fate,

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however, it was never be attacked. For Marx machinery acted:

‘as a competitor who gets the better of the workman, and is constantly on the point of making him superfluous. It is also a power inimical to him, and such as capital proclaims it from the roof tops and as such makes use of it. It is the most powerful weapon for repressing strikes, those periodical revolts of the working class against the autocracy of capital. It would be possible to write quite a history of the inventions, made since 1830, for the sole purpose of supplying capital with weapons against the revolts of the working class. With regard to the invention of the self-acting mule … a creation destined to restore order among the industrious classes … this invention confirms the great doctrine already propounded, that when capital enlist science into her service, the refractory hand of labour will always be taught docility’ (Marx, 1995, pp.267-268).

In continuation while Arkwright would be renowned for his compassion his less scrupulous colleagues were far less concerned for the well being of their workers. The triumph of the water frame, the factory system and the reduced rate in excise duty would make cotton manufacture a lucrative trade, which would lead to the invention of additional machinery. In 1779 Samuel Crompton would invent the spinning mule and in 1786 Edmund Cartwright, the automatic loom. Such inventions would necessitate the construction of newer, even larger cotton mills. At these mills conditions would be far worse than those at Cromford with serious injury and death a common occurrence. With the:

‘introduction of gas lighting early in the 19th century … mills could operate 24 hours a day. As one lot of sleepy children climbed out of bed in the morning, the night shift was ready to take their place. It was said at the time that the beds of Lancashire never get cold. The overseer who had to keep them awake sometimes could do so only by using violence’ (Burton, 2014, p.11).

Thus, the introduction of the factory system and the machinery that made it all possible would lead to the introduction of ‘modifications aimed at the abandonment of the moral economy’ (Hearn, 1978, p.71). Throughout the last decades of the eighteenth century workers in the cotton industry would speak out about the unsavoury conditions of work life in the cotton mill. They would protest to Parliament about the violating of ‘traditional protections generated by the wide scale introduction of the factory system’

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(Hearn, 1978, p.71). At first the government would be receptive to their complaints, however, by the turn of the century statutes were introduced:

‘to facilitate free trade and the incorporation of industrial techniques. Either implicitly – by refusing to sanction violations of common law regulations, or explicitly – through the passage of legislation’, i.e. Combinations Act 1799 (Hearn, 1978, p.71).

During this transition labour would be reified as an object that was to be bought and sold. The worker would be ‘born to toil (and) had no other prospect than that of remaining a toiler all his life’ (Engels, 1993, p.30). The government had a difficult choice, either:

‘further economic and productive expansion (by separating) the economy from social obligations – in short a denial of social responsibility (or refuse) to allow continued growth (thus intensifying) the opposition of the emerging entrepreneurial class’ (Hearn, 1978, 69).

The government would choose the former as they greeted ‘popular uprisings with repression, not concession (as) they proceeded to dismantle most of the traditional protections against the vagaries of the market’ (Hearn, 1978, 69). The English bourgeoisie of whom the manufacturers were an established part, were being ‘enhanced directly by means of the poverty of the workers’ (Engels, 1993, p.31). This malevolent desire to attain wealth over and above anything else would carry:

‘the lowest orders to a point of real oppression … (to) a situation infinitely more degraded and miserable than they were before the introduction of these manufactories, upon the success of which their bare subsistence now depends’ (Butt, 1971, p.100).

This decision by the government ‘to disassociate themselves from cultural traditions’ (Hearn, 1978, p.62) would lead the bourgeoisie and the proletariat to present alternatives to the existing arrangements ‘each rooted in one of the contending alternatives anticipated by the critical reason of natural law ideology’ (Hearn, 1978, p.81). While the middle-class manufacturers would express a proclivity for laissez-faire economics whereby the proletariat could improve society by improving themselves, the proletariat’s penchant for communalism would require the worker to better himself by

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revolutionising society. Consequently, a struggle would develop between which one of these alternative arrangements was to be administered. There would, however, albeit for a brief period, be a uniting of interests between the manufacturers and the workers in their opposition towards the government’s taxation of the press – an alliance akin to that forged between the professional players and their chairmen against the FA in 1885. While the manufacturers:

‘argued that such taxation prohibited free exchange … workers … maintained that taxation … (restricted) the number of workers who could afford to purchase them – (a situation, which had) weakened the viability of a distinct working class press’ (Hearn, 1978, p.81).

In doing so I believe that the taxation of the press by the government was a tacit attempt to deny both the manufacturers and the workers access to the public sphere by blocking ‘the emergence of a free press … in which citizens could enter into free public discussion’ (Finlayson, 2005, p.10). While their motives for opposing the government were to differ, both the manufacturers and the workers would be seeking to undermine the legitimacy of the government’s authority. Nevertheless, this shared antipathy towards the government would only be short-lived as the manufacturers would eventually secure a coalition with the government, akin to that forged by the FA and the FL against the proletarian professional players in 1900 – a feat realised through the retention of the retain-and-transfer system and the introduction of the maximum wage. This alliance between the government and the manufacturers would be predicated on the ability of the latter, through the generation of vast wealth, to surreptitiously apply pressure on the former in order to influence their decision-making. Consequently, the government would introduce policies designed to separate the economic from the social – policies designed to infringe upon the traditional framework of the working-class. One of these policies would concern the issue of worker discipline. For if the factory system were to be employed in an efficient and productive manner then it would be necessary to employ workers who were able to perform:

‘regular, methodical, and routine tasks. Therefore methods of disciplining the workforce, i.e. punishments, were introduced in order to adapt the worker to the subtleties of factory life. The cotton worker had to be reliable, however, at the start of the nineteenth century workers continued to regulate their activities in accordance with traditional holidays … irregular attendance was, therefore, commonplace. The weavers were used to play frequently all day on Monday and

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the greater part of Tuesday, and work very late on Thursday night, and frequently all night on Friday. Spinners, even as late as 1800, were missing from the factories on Mondays and Tuesdays, and when they did return, they would sometimes work desperately night and day, to clear off their tavern score, and get more money to spend in dissipation’ (Hearn, 1978, p.76).

Worker discipline would thus enable the manufacturing class to maximise their profits while asserting their domination over the workers in a manner that would enable them to reduce their influence over the productive process. The operating of technologically advanced machinery required a harmonisation between worker and machine with time being measured purely in quantitative terms. The manufacturing class would achieve this through the suppression of the pre-industrial traditions of the working-class, i.e. play, artistry and social responsibility:

‘Thus the rules of experience were to be replaced by the laws of science … the convergence of industrialism and capitalism entailed the breakdown of traditional institutional controls over economic and productive activity’ (Hearn, 1978, p.79).

During this period customary, social obligations would gradually be unfulfilled as the natural law ideology, inherent to eighteenth century society, was replaced with scientific laws, laws of the market, developed through industrial capitalism – laws independent of man. The culture and traditions of the working-class were being:

‘objectified … (as they) became less able to supply meaning and alternatives to daily experience. The human element, heretofore conspicuously visible in the creation of culture, was suppressed, and traditional standards of pride and social responsibility were replaced by criteria of efficiency and profitability’ (Hearn, 1978, p.143).

I suggest that worker discipline, in this regard, be viewed as an ideological illusion, an illusory law, designed to ‘exercise control and domination; indeed to manufacture history according to (the manufacturers’) interests’ (Freeden, 2003, p.6). Fundamental to the establishment of work discipline was the need to alter the cotton workers perception, relationship and understanding of time. If the cotton industry were to develop into a technologically advanced, industrialised society then time would need to be ‘compartmentalized, artificially regulated, and synchronized to the mechanics of

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technology’ (Hearn, 1978, p.78). While the FL believed that the free market would ‘destroy the essential balance’ (Harding, 1991, p.4) of the League, with the concept of the ‘survival of the fittest … (being an) anathema to them’ (Harding, 1991, p.3), the manufacturing classes’ predilection for laissez-faire principles would lead them to oppose the government’s regulation of the market or:

‘more appropriately, social responsibility … (and in particular their) passage of the Factory Acts which would regulate child labor. The opposition of the Factory Acts rested on the following grounds: (1) Children encountered miserable working conditions only in small factories, which, through free competition, eventually will be eradicated. (2) Government interference would constitute an obstacle to free competition, thus impeding the destruction of small factories and, on a more general level, causing economic distress. (3) Such interference would abridge the private and therefore natural responsibility, which parents have for their children. (4) Regulation of hours, therefore, would interfere with the liberty of parents and, (5) more generally, with the liberty of free labor’ (Hearn, 1978, pp. 89-90).

The manufacturers would seek to proliferate their doctrine of the political economy through the publication of articles in ‘middle-class sponsored periodicals written especially for the working-class audience’ (Hearn, 1978, p.90). Thus:

‘instead of promoting human freedom and human flourishing (the manufacturing class) actually began to stifle it. (Instead of) fostering the formation of rational opinion and reliable beliefs, (they had created) an arena in which public opinion could be stage-managed and manipulated’ (Finlayson, 2005, p.13).

Thus in publishing their articles the manufacturing class had hoped:

‘to present the tenets of classical political economy as constitutive of an established and undeniable science … operating independently of human and social forces (with) the ultimate benefits of mechanized production (being) glorified’ (Hearn, 1978, p.90).

If successful then the manufacturing class, ‘the controllers of human conduct and thought (would be able to convince) the members of the subservient class (the cotton

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workers) that the dominant bourgeois ideology was theirs as well’ (Freeden, 2003, p.6) – that ‘the interests of the working classes and of the middle classes were the same’ (Hearn, 1978, p.90). For Marx:

‘in imagination, individuals seem freer under the dominance of the bourgeoisie than before … in reality, of course, they are less free. For the proletarians … the condition of their existence, labour, and with it all the conditions of existence governing modern society, have become something accidental, something over which they, as separate individuals, have no control, and over which no social organization can give them control. The contradiction between the individuality of each separate proletarian and labour, the condition of life forced upon him, becomes evident to him himself, for he is sacrificed from youth upwards and, within his own class, has no chance of arriving at the conditions which would place him in the other class. Thus they find themselves directly opposed to the form in which, hitherto, individuals have given themselves collective expression, that is, the State. In order, therefore, to assert themselves as individuals, they must overthrow the State’ (Marx, 2011, pp.77-78).

In response the workers would seek to formulate ‘an alternative ideology, one (that was) critical of both aristocratic power and middle class utilitarianism’ (Hearn, 1978, p.90) in an attempt to ‘install instead a set of wholesome social practices that (would provide) the empirical basis for true social consciousness’ (Finlayson, 2005, p.7). The cotton workers would attempt to construct an alternate society founded upon social responsibility, with associations and organisations intended to protect traditional protections. One of the most significant contributors to the attainment of such a society would be carried out by the Luddites,28 a social movement whose anger, rather than being directed at the machine itself, was focused on the inhumane social relations resulting from their implementation. The movement would embody a strategic effort by the workers to obtain critical control of the productive process. While the Luddite movement would ultimately fail ‘to achieve its insurrectionary objectives’ (Hearn, 1978, p.115) it would prove highly effective in generating the support and legitimacy of other highly influential members of society, including, Robert Owen, factory reformer, and magistrate:

28 ‘Any of the textile workers opposed to mechanization who organized machine-breaking between 1811- 1816’ (McLeod, 1990, p.597).

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‘The year in which Owen was first formulating his ideas for publication, 1812, was one of extreme disorder. Luddism, beginning among the stocking-makers of Nottinghamshire, spread to Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire. Nearer home … there were food riots … the worst trouble of all was, with the national strike of handloom weavers … As one of the Lanarkshire magistrates he was well aware of the extent of the discontent among the weavers and other groups of workers. Hence his concern and his call for concessions that would bring improvement in working-class conditions’ (Butt, 1971, p.80).

In 1798, fourteen years earlier, Owen would become manager at New Lanark, a cotton mill established by Richard Arkwright in 1785. Owen believed that the children and their families employed at the mill were being ‘overworked and … demoralized’ (Burton, 2014, p.12). He alleged that in order to relieve them from the ‘dangers and critical situation in which (they were) now placed, effectual measures (must be devised in order) to ameliorate the condition of the millions employed in this manufacture’ (Butt, 1971, p.99). Consequently, Owen would introduce comprehensive reforms to New Lanark, including the building of a new school for adults and children named the New Institution. He would be acutely aware that if children were too exhausted after a long day’s work they would have difficulty learning. He took it upon himself to reduce the number of hours they worked in a day, from fourteen hours to ten and three-quarter hours, while no child under the age of ten would be employed.

Owen thought that children under the age of ten should be in school and not in a cotton mill. He would have preferred to make the age at which children started in the mill later, however, his business partners would prevent him from doing so. Owen considered education to be an essential stage in the development of a child that would define their temperament and personality in the future. In his mind children should never be hurt or panicked but rather encouraged and supported. ‘They must be kept interested and drawn out to desire knowledge, and this knowledge must be given to them in a simple, practical way’ (Morton, 1962, p25).

At the New Institution children would not only be offered an academic education but also an opportunity to participate in extra-curricula activities such as music, dance and physical exercise. As soon as infants could be brought to the school they were received, encouraged to play, happily and were well looked after. They were ‘saved from the terrible neglect that was the fate of nearly all young children whose parents were both working long hours in the factories’ (Morton, 1962, p25).

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Owen in his endeavours would be reacting to the prevailing conditions of his time by attempting to redress the damage caused by the introduction of worker discipline/denial of social responsibility by the manufacturing class. By affording the children of New Lanark what their parents, factory owners and government could and would not, he was seeking to establish a society that ‘directly repudiated industrial capitalism (through the development) of alternative arrangements and parallel institutions (that were able to) secure traditional protections’ (Hearn, 1978, p.129).

Owen’s desire to:

‘infuse social responsibility into industrial society … gave Owenism its appeal to the skilled laborerer, and the industrial poor. Restorative of traditional obligations, Owenism produced a critique of prevailing arrangements, which because it appealed to both sentiment and reason, won the support of the underemployed and the relatively secure craftsmen, the unskilled and the highly skilled laborers’ (Hearn, 1978, p.125).

After twenty-five years in the industry Owen declared:

‘as employer and master manufacturer in Lancashire and Lanarkshire, I had done all I could to lighten the evils of those whom I employed; yet with all I could do under our most irrational system for creating wealth … I could only to a limited extent alleviate the wretchedness of their condition, while I knew that society … possessed the ample means to educate … so as to make all into fully- formed, highly intelligent … happy men and women. I thought previous to experience, that the simple … enunciation of truth … would attract the attention … of all parties; and that the reformation of the population of the world was comparatively an easy task’ (Butt, 1971, p.102).

I shall argue that Owen’s vision for New Lanark and his purpose for creating the New Institution can be explained by Mannheim’s concept of a utopia, a ‘vision of a future or perfect society’ (Freeden, 2003, p.13). Within the framework of Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge, Robert Owen, was thus an analyst/intellectual, i.e. ‘a self-educated, empirical industrialist, trained in the practical school of Manchester’ (Morton, 1962 p.24), whose new explanatory theory/knowledge, i.e. compulsory education and the amelioration of factory conditions, would ‘enlighten the less aware producers (the government and factory owners), and consumers of ideology (women and children

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working in cotton mills), who were much too caught up in its web’ (Freeden, 2003, p.13).

In this regard I shall view Owen’s Utopian vision for New Lanark as a total conception of ideology or ‘Weltanschauung, an all-encompassing view of the world adopted by a given group that was to reflect the general ideas and thought-systems of an historical period’ (Freeden, 2003, p.14). However, while Owen had formulated a total conception of ideology for New Lanark for his ideas and policies to become prevalent throughout the whole of the cotton industry and for a unified sociology of knowledge to surface it would be necessary to appreciate the contrasting viewpoints of his contemporaries ‘from which different relationist understandings (could be) assessed, and from which truths and knowledge of the real world could be extracted’ (Freeden, 2003, pp.15-16).

Thus, for Owen to achieve his objective he would have to convince those ‘business men to whom profits were the main consideration and who were reluctant to spend anything on education or social welfare’ (Morton, 1962, p.23) of his plans. Therefore, on 25 January 1815 he would engage in a ‘public campaign – for a Bill to regulate the employment of young people in textile factories’ (Morton, 1962, p.26). He would initiate a gathering of industrial entrepreneurs in Glasgow to whom he would present his proposals. He avowed that as the cotton industry had ‘driven children into mills – those receptacles … for living human skeletons, almost disrobed of intellect’ (Butt, 1971, p.102), it was their responsibility to alleviate this suffering. Owen offered his:

‘remedy for industrial distress (with) a three-point Bill. Children should be prohibited from employment in cotton or other mills of machinery under the age of twelve; hours of labour should not exceed twelve per day; and no children should be employed without passing an educational test’ (Butt, 1971, p.103).

Owen asked that his colleagues contemplate his recommendations and then convene at a later date. ‘He circulated and published his observations widely, but the result was – not surprisingly – disappointing’ (Butt, 1971, p.103). However, unperturbed, Owen would send a copy of his proposals to each and every MP in Parliament, including the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In time he would convince the government of the suitability of his plans. He would stress to them the evils that had accompanied the advances in technology and the incessant need of the manufacturing class to attain wealth at the expense of the working class. He professed to the notion that:

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‘laissez-faire economics had destroyed that open, honest sincerity, without which man cannot make others happy, nor enjoy happiness himself, and had particularly harmed the working classes. (He) contrasted the imagined idyllic existence of the eighteenth-century rural peasantry with the bleak realities of contemporary factory life, when children toiled from 6 am to 8 pm for their bare subsistence’ (Butt, 1971, pp.104-105).

Owen believed that any government that was incapable of ‘finding good perpetual employment for the working class in such manner that in return for it they shall be well- placed, fed, clothed, lodged, trained, educated, amused, and governed, ought any longer to be allowed to govern them’ (Butt, 1971, p.99). It would not be until the 2 July 1819 after ‘every possible delay was created … that a Bill, so mutilated as to be virtually useless, was passed through Parliament’ (Morton, 1962, p.26). This Bill would represent the first of many Factory Acts that were to be introduced throughout the nineteenth century. However:

‘it was a weak measure: Owen’s original proposal of 1815 was … spoilt. As Owen impotently sat through the Lord’s debates, the Bill was strongly opposed, and often by the most unfair means, by almost all cotton spinners and manufacturers in the kingdom, except Messrs Arkwright, the Strutts and the Fieldens. The ultimate Act applied only to cotton mills, providing that children should not be employed under the age of nine and that children under sixteen should be limited to twelve hours actual labour with no night-work. Owen had undoubtedly done his best’ (Butt, 1971, p.117).

While Owen had been unable to achieve all that he had set out to, the passing of the Bill in 1819 (the Cotton Mill and Factories Act), would signify the surfacing of an unified sociology of knowledge in the cotton industry as it pertained to Mannheim’s concept of relationism. The 1819 Bill in this regard, albeit not to Owen’s liking, had represented an amalgamation of ‘different relationist understandings … from which ‘truths’ and knowledge of the real world could be extracted’ (Freeden, 2003, p.13) – a feat not achieved in English football in 1900.

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Chapter Four: 1907-1909 Introduction

I identify this period of English football as a one-dimensional industrial capitalist society characterised by the FA and the FL’s denial of social responsibility through the continued presence of the maximum wage and retain-and-transfer system – a situation that would ‘precipitate widespread social protest’ (Hearn, 1978, p.69) from the professional players. I suggest that the purpose of the maximum wage and retain-and- transfer system was to further the ‘economic and productive expansion’ (Hearn, 1978, p.69) of the League. Any refusal by the FA to aid the FL is this endeavour would ‘intensify the opposition of the emerging entrepreneurial class’ (Hearn, 1978, p.69). In conjunction with this denial of social responsibility the FA would seek to suppress the working-class culture of the players, in this instance, the consumption of alcohol and their presence in public houses. In response the players would seek to form a new Players’ Association, namely the Association of Football Players and Trainers’ Union (AFPTU) in 1907, which would strive to create a society for their ranks founded upon social responsibility and devoid of the maximum wage and retain-and-transfer system.

Throughout this period the FA would attempt to further the denial of social responsibility to the players by seeking to abolish the AFPTU, by threatening the players with revoking their licence to play football if they did not renounce their membership of the AFPTU, by forcing the AFPTU into severing its affiliation to the outside world, in this instance, the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU) and by proselytising about their aspiration to form an alternate Union to that of the AFPTU that was to be run and financed by the FA itself. In response the AFPTU would threaten the FA with strike action, albeit unsuccessfully, in order to coerce the FA into amending the maximum wage.

In this chapter the relationship between the FA and the players, and their representatives, the AFPTU, will be explained with reference to Gramsci’s theory of ideological hegemony, Habermas’ concept of the public sphere, Thompson’s critical conception of ideology, Marx and Engels theory of ideology and Marcuse’s category of one- dimensionality. Additionally, the continued presence of the maximum wage would, once again, be viewed as a ‘socially necessary illusion … a functional false belief, which ... serve(ed) to shore up certain social institutions and the relations of domination they support’ (Finlayson, 2005, p.11).

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During this period the professional players would become circumscribed by the:

‘values, institutions and structures of industrial capitalist society (with the FA and the FL) actively allying to undermine the values and practices, the traditions of (proletarian) culture. This effort (would effect) a suppression of imagination, and thereby facilitate further industrial and economic growth. With the suppression of imagination (protest from the players would become) aimless and disorganized. No transcendent criteria capable of guiding social action (would be) forthcoming, and the ideological consciousness (of the players would lack any) viable and meaningful alternatives to the existing arrangements. It (would as a result become) extremely difficult (for the players and their Union representatives, the AFPTU), to establish standards for discrediting society. What this (meant) … was a pragmatic acceptance of the status quo’ (Hearn, 1978, p.232).

Nevertheless, the AFPTU would seek to overcome this suppression of imagination and to discredit the society of English football by providing the players with ‘physical spaces (where they could unite) in a common aim, to make use of their own reason in unconstrained discussion between equals’ (Finlayson, 2005, p.10), i.e. the AFPTU headquarters in St. Peter’s Square, Manchester. The actions of the FA throughout this period, in seeking, for example, to abolish the AFPTU and their links to the outside world, would conversely be viewed as a tacit attempt to initiate the ‘disintegration and decline of (the) public sphere’ (Finlayson, 2005, p.13) as it pertained to English football.

This particular period of English football as a one-dimensional industrial capitalist society will be compared and contrasted with the cotton industry as a one-dimensional industrial capitalist society from 1837 to 1848. This industry would be characterised by a government and a manufacturing class who would not only seek to deny the workers social responsibility through the introduction of the 1832 Reform Act and the 1834 New Poor Law but also to objectify working-class culture by emptying it of its creative dynamic. The purpose of this endeavour was to make culture less able to ‘supply meaning and alternatives to daily experience. Traditional standards of pride and social responsibility (were thus) replaced with criteria of efficiency and profitability’ (Hearn, 1978, p.143). The workers, with specific focus on Richard Marsden and the Preston Chartists, would respond by seeking to challenge the ‘middle-class monopoly over Parliament representation … (and) the detested New Poor Law … (while) campaigning for factory reform’ (King, 1981, pp.2-3). However, in 1848 without achieving any of its

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objectives Chartism in North Lancashire would be dead. During this period the inability of the cotton workers to achieve the necessary social reforms will be explained with reference to Marx’s theory of societal development and social revolution. For Marx:

‘the English working class (were) standing on the threshold of revolution … one necessarily arising out of the structural antagonisms internally generated by the dynamics of capitalism. Since capitalism had developed most fully in England, Marx expected that the irreducible structural antagonisms between capital and labor … would ultimately ignite class struggle. But class struggle did not occur in England’ (Hearn, 1978, pp.244, 246).

• Gramsci’s theory of ideological hegemony, Thompson’s critical conception of ideology, Habermas’ concept of the public sphere, Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge, and Marcuse’s category of one-dimensionality will help to explain the FA and the FL’s denial of social responsibility to the professional players through the continued presence of the maximum wage and retain-and-transfer system and their attempts at suppressing working-class culture/tradition of alcohol consumption. In addition the formation and activities of the AFPTU will be compared and contrasted with the Chartist movement.

During the mid-nineteenth century the government and the manufacturing class would successfully unite in their ambition to create a one-dimensional society where the:

‘systematic blockage of the capacities found in culture and consciousness, capacities which enable the formulation of alternatives in terms of which people anticipate the future and discredit the present … (would cause) the English working class (to lose) its rebellious disposition and (enter) into the institutions of industrial capitalism’ (Hearn, 1978, p.8).

Prior to the history of English football under discussion the government and manufacturing class would view the participation of the English working class in pre- codified football as a cultural characteristic of that class that needed to be suppressed. In February 1846 the mayor of Derby was determined to:

‘suppress the town’s annual Shrove Tuesday riot, masquerading as a game of football. If he could persuade the working men of Derby to give up the annual ritual it would be a major coup. Shrove Tuesday, an apprentices’ holiday, was

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set aside for huge, tumultuous games of football not just in Derby but throughout Britain. Attempts had been made to ban the football as early as 1731. (However), Shrove Tuesday football was a safety valve for social tensions. The social order was turned on its head for a day, the streets were surrendered to the mob, and the lords of misrule were let loose. In the hours leading up to the game the footballers knocked on doors, demanding money to fund their drinking’ (Sanders, 2009, pp.1, 2, 5, 6).

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the industrial revolution had given birth to an ‘increasingly religious urban middle class, fervently committed to a refinement of manners’ (Sanders, 2009, p.7) – a class who perceived football to be a violent, regressive past time of the working class that had been ‘subversive of good order and Government’ (Sanders, 2009, p.7). For the working class, however, football not only emphasised ‘shared traditions (but also brought) together a great number of people (who were able) to express their grievances’ (Hearn, 1978, p.146) and to establish standards for discrediting society. During this period the middle-class’ fight to suppress the participation of the working class in football was ‘part of a broader offensive against a multitude of traditional working-class customs and pastimes’ (Sanders, 2009, p.8). There would, however, be a:

‘strong element of self-interest in the middle-class morality. The chaotic rhythms of rural life – the frequent holidays and irregular work patterns – did not suit the new industrial society. If you’d invested in a factory and machinery you couldn’t afford to have it standing idle just because your workforce had decamped en masse to a local village fair, justifying their absence through time honoured custom. Football was (viewed as) nothing but beastly fury … heavily ritualistic, mock-combat rather than sport’ (Sanders, 2009, p.8).

However, the traditional custom of playing all day on Monday was coming to an end and as a result of the ever-increasing observance of the Sabbath, football was to lose its place in the cultural framework of the working class. In 1835 the government would introduce the British Highways Act, which would make it illegal to play football on public highways.

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The working class were:

‘slowly (being) hemmed in, by fences and hedges, by walls and factory gates, by the harsh morality and pitiless work ethic or the rising middle class and the insatiable demands of the new industrial economy. There was little space for football. By the middle of the nineteenth century the glowing lights of the pub were often the only place of welcome to the poor once the factory whistle sounded’ (Sanders, 2009, pp.11-12).

In this respect I believe that the government and the manufacturing classes’ ability to suppress the working-class tradition of playing football, for the purpose of furthering industrial capitalism, can be viewed as being analogous to the attempts of the FA and the FL to further industrial capitalism in English football through the introduction of the maximum wage (1900), the retain-and-transfer system (1893) and the suppression of the working-class tradition/culture of alcohol consumption. By suppressing such ‘communal values and practices’ (Hearn, 1978, p.138) the FA and the FL were trying to convince the players that English football ‘was to be judged solely by its commercial success … (and that) the test of this success was profits’ (Hearn, 1978, p.138). If they could successfully convey this mantra to the players then the economic system of English football would be able to provide:

‘its own standards of legitimacy, no longer subject to external criteria of assessment. The economic system (would then be able to establish) a content- free ideology, which (would replace) the anticipatory ideology and the transcendent criteria of social action, which it contained. Issuing from this self- legitimating process was a new form of domination’ (Hearn, 1978, p.138).

However, the FA and the FL would be unsuccessful in conveying this message to the players who would in turn respond ‘to this realignment, and to the deterioration of traditions … with a series of protest activities’ (Hearn, 1978, p.137). Most notably, with the formation of the AFPTU in 1907 and their threat of strike action in 1909. As has previously been mentioned, the FA had codified English football for the purpose of instilling ‘public school virtues of sportsmanship and fair play in the masses. (However, the professional players had seized) hold of it, recreating it in their own image’ (Sanders, 2009, p.267). For the working class, football had allowed them to create a community where:

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‘all brothers (were) together for an hour and half, (a place where men could escape) the clanking machinery of this lesser life, from work, wages (and) bad bosses, (they could) escape with (their) mates and (their) neighbours … swapping judgments like lords of the earth … into another and altogether more splendid kind of life, hurtling with conflict and yet passionate and beautiful in its art. Football gave working people: passion, excitement and beauty in their lives that were otherwise drab and monotonous’ (Sanders, 2009, p.268).

For the FA, in particular, this anarchistic sense of community would be associated to the consumption of alcohol, a recreational activity that needed to be suppressed. For social reformers and muscular Christians, football had originally been ‘employed to divert working-class youth from drink and sloth’ (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p.3), a form of working-class culture, that was:

‘associated with idleness, and, as such, was an obstacle to a reliable, methodical, obedient, and productive workforce … a prerequisite for sustained industrial and economic growth, could only be furthered, it was argued, with the suppression of (such) play’ (Hearn, 1978, p.145).

At this time the dangers associated to the consumption of alcohol would be subjected to great debate in society. The ‘Temperance societies were at their strongest; the ruin that alcohol had caused millions of working people’s lives was very much to the fore (and as a result there were) many Football Association officials, amateur to a man, who (would take) an active role in fighting the scourge’ (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p.9). Under the ‘banner of moral improvement (the FA would seek to) extirpate the barbaric exercises inhibitive of the growth of respectability’ (Hearn, 1978, p.145) in English football. Lord Kinnaird, President of the FA:

‘was head of the YMCA, Charles Clegg, FA Council Chairman, was President of the Band of Hope, and John Lewis, a top referee and FA official, was an enthusiastic advocate of the Sunday Football movement (a subdivision of the Temperance movement) designed specifically to keep men out of public houses’ (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p.10).

In 1900 Nicholas Lane Jackson of the FA would write: ‘the oft quoted plea in favour of professional football, that it keeps men from the public house, is not supported by facts’

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(Harding and Taylor, 2003, p10). Conversely, Preston North End’s John Goodall would write:

‘that football and footballers helped to keep people out of the public houses by providing them with a healthy diversion on their Saturday afternoon (while) Harry Reason (of Clapham Orient) … explained that there were few places a young man could sit quietly and chat about football other than a public house’ (Harding and Taylor, 2003, pp.10-11).

Accordingly, I shall explain the FA’s attempts to suppress the working-class culture of drinking and the rebellious tendencies inherent to it with the aid of Habermas’ concept of the public sphere. In this regard the purpose of the FA’s endeavours were not only to aggrandise the economic interests of the FL but also to prevent the players from congregating in physical spaces where they could:

‘enter into free public discussion (in which) a shared culture (could develop) that (would help players) to discover and to express their needs and interests … (to function) as a check on the legitimacy of the powers of unrepresentative and closed government’ (Finlayson, 2005, pp. 10-11).

If successful then the FA would not only be able to ‘determine the patterns of thought, sentiment, and behavior of (the players but also to prevent the formation of any) resistance and opposition’ (Hearn, 1978, p.148) to their authority. For the FA, the congregating of players in public houses, a form of recreation/play, had afforded them:

‘fantastic expression to political aspirations, and enabled a critical assessment of existing reality. By constricting play, by severing the linkages between play and real concerns, and thus fragmenting experience, (the FA hoped that) the rebellious disposition sustained’ (Hearn, 1978, p.148) by the players would be sufficiently weakened. Thus, by ‘expanding industrialization (twelve clubs in the FL in 1893 to forty clubs in 1905), by implementing governmental legislation (introduction of maximum wage in 1900), and (by introducing) moral reform campaigns (Band of Hope, Sunday Football Movement, etc.)’ (Hearn, 1978, p.195) the FA and the FL were hoping to sufficiently weaken and constrain the ‘creative, transcending dynamic’ (Hearn, 1978, p.195) of the players.

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During the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century workers in England would respond to similar attempts by the government and the emergent middle class to constrain play by establishing their own protective communities. These communities were:

‘loosely linked by a common ideological consciousness. Traditional values, beliefs, and practices that afforded a meaningful framework with which the workers assessed the new and dislocating experiences of industrialization. The categories taken from the past were external to the burgeoning industrial capitalist society, and were initially used to critically evaluate that society. In this way the critical categories became transcendental and, as such, provided goals and guidance to protest activity’ (Hearn, 1978, p.195).

Conversely, in 1907 players in English football would form the Association of Football Players’ and Trainers’ Union (AFPTU). Akin to the Chartist movement, the AFPTU would draw its:

‘strength from a number of open social locations … in which individuals and groups … simultaneously (had) freedom to construct legitimacy for their critical perspectives and … to retain a sense of integration and of social responsibility. The major open social locations in English society were found in … the occupational communities of … socially or geographically segregated workers. Strongly attached to the past … these communities supplied the categories, which guided participation in social change’ (Hearn, 1978, pp. 195-196).

For the AFPTU these open social locations would exist in cities such as Preston, Sheffield, Bradford, Birmingham and Manchester and, in particular, football clubs like Manchester United whose players had previously worked in the local collieries. While the AFPTU would persist throughout this particular period ‘their aims and activities over the next several years (were) minimal and isolated (Hearn, 1978, p.137). Although these open social locations would offer support to Chartism and the AFPTU they would ‘set restrictions on the effectiveness of (these) movements’ (Hearn, 1978, p.225) that would sufficiently hamper the formation of inherently unified, national organisations.

In 1909, as will be discussed in depth later, the FA would threaten players with suspensions if they remained affiliated to the Union. Henry Broomfield (Manchester United player) of the APFTU would be found ‘exhorting players to stand firm and not

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resign from the Union. (However), in London he was simply rebuffed … the Newcastle players … were resigning … only in Manchester did players declare their determination to hold on’ (Harding, 1991, p.67). Consequently, this divergence in opinion would prevent:

‘the establishment of the solid cohesion and agreement necessary for a viable national organization. Thus, while the (players) shared a common experience … their interpretations of this experience varied … and, although they discredited the established authority relations, they were not conducive to the development of a broadly accepted set of objectives’ (Hearn, 1978, p.226).

Two year previously, in 1907, the inaugural meeting of the Union would be presided over by Billy Meredith, chairman of the AFPTU and a player from Manchester United. Meredith believed that the Union’s purpose was:

‘to promote and protect the interests of its members by endeavoring to come to an amicable arrangement with the governing football authorities with a view to abolishing all restrictions which affect the social and financial position of players’ (Harding, 1991, p.46).

Throughout this period I believe that the activities of the AFPTU were comparable to those of the Chartist movement (1838-1858), a movement motivated by a ‘sense of revenge, despair, and disillusionment which (had) prevailed among the workers in the cause of social change’ (Hearn, 1978, p.180). While the AFPTU and its predecessor the AFPU were regarded as the first working-class movement in English football, Chartism was ‘conventionally regarded as the first nation working-class movement in England’ (Hearn, 1978, p.137). Similar to Chartism the AFPTU hoped to achieve its desired reforms by working with the existing institutions, i.e. Billy Meredith, chairman of AFPTU, rather than seek to overthrow the FA hoped ‘to see the day when the players have direct representation on the ruling body’ (Harding, 1991, p.42). In this respect both Chartism and the AFPTU lacked ‘a transcendent vision (as) the alternatives (they) proposed were either not significantly different from the prevailing arrangements or they were regressive in orientation’ (Hearn, 1978, p.187). While the formation of the Chartist movement could be directly linked to the ‘introduction of the New Poor Law’ (Hearn, 1978, p.180) in 1834, the formation of the AFPTU in 1907 could be identified as having arisen, as a result of its predecessor, the AFPU’s failure to alter the FL’s incumbent transfer system and to prevent the FA from introducing the maximum wage.

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In forming the AFPTU in 1907 it was hoped that the new Union could assuage the deficiencies of its antecedent. By opening its headquarters in Manchester the Union was attempting to provide a physical space, a reopening of the public sphere, that would enable the players to formulate measures in ‘unconstrained discussion between equals’ (Finlayson, 2005, p.10) that were designed to oppose ‘those twin demons, the maximum wage and the transfer system’ (Harding, 1991, p.52). In this regard the AFPTU were offering the players an alternative to the public house, an arena that was ‘independent of the economic and political systems’ (Finlayson, 2005, p.10) of the FA and the FL. The AFPTU would attempt to expand and promote such an environment through the creation of a Union journal that would seek to ‘secure a direct line of communication to members free from press interference’ (Harding, 1991, p.48), and the placement of articles written by prominent members of the Union in football papers that were sympathetic to the plight of the player, i.e. Thomson’s Weekly News. In this regard the AFPTU were now afforded:

‘a regular platform from which to hold forth in an unprecedented fashion. This freedom to voice their ideas and reactions, to criticize openly League and FA officials and actions, (thus) significantly (altered) the nature and climate of the struggle between football’s administrators and the men they sought to control’ (Harding, 1991, p.49).

In this respect the AFPTU were using this platform to test ‘the legitimacy of the powers of (the FA and the FL) by checking whether (the maximum wage and the retain-and- transfer system) were in the common good’ (Finlayson, 2005, p.11). Thus, in 1908, the AFPTU, in stark contrast to its predecessor, would be assured and forthright in its assault on the FA and the FL as it fought to position itself at the center of football politics. At the ‘Ye Old Royal Restaurant in Birmingham, Broomfield declared … that the Union had once again been stirring the FA into action. Changes, Broomfield predicted, were on the horizon’ (Harding, 1991, p.49). The Union would concentrate its attention on the issue of wages and more precisely on the reformation of the maximum wage. Analogous to Chartism, once again, the ‘alternatives it proposed were not significantly different from the prevailing arrangements. Caught in the emerging one- dimensionality of industrial capitalism’ (Hearn, 1978, p.186), the AFPTU would be unable to ‘discern historical alternatives; and as a consequence, choice became limited to the present’ (Hearn, 1978, p.186).

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Throughout the first decade of the twentieth century it had become common knowledge that most League clubs had disregarded the FL’s maximum wage with several clubs being scrutinised for having financial irregularities, i.e. presents to players, illegal bonuses, illegal wages, etc. For the League clubs the ‘most valuable talent, second only to skill on the pitch, was in laundering the accounts’ (Inglis, 1985, pp. 10-11). However, rather than punish the clubs the FA decided to pardon to those who agreed to no longer be ‘dictated to by the players’ (Harding, 1991, p.58). After a brief period of consideration the dissenting clubs consented to the FA’s proposals. They would now stand ‘united and blameless, … behind the FA, happy to watch as the latter took on and, hopefully defeated the Players’ Union’ (Harding, 1991, p.59).

In response the AFPTU would seek to align themselves to the outside world, thus enhancing the scope of the public sphere by arranging meetings with the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU) – a Union formed in order ‘to work for industrial peace and to seek to prevent strikes and lock-outs’ (Harding, 1991, p.61). However, by involving the GFTU the FA concluded that the AFPTU were considering something radical. In June 1908 Charles Clegg of the FA, a traditional intellectual, would issue an ultimatum to the players, either to terminate their membership of the AFPTU or have their status as professionals revoked. In the following month the AFPTU would formally affiliate with the GFTU. Herbert Broomfield, secretary of Union, and organic intellectual who was ‘not a typical professional footballer … well-educated (having passed Civil Service exams)’ (Harding, 1991, p.67) would ask that all players disregard the FA’s ultimatum and reaffirm their loyalty to the Union. Broomfield’s plan was to prevent the new season from commencing on time and in doing so force the League clubs into persuading the FA into withdrawing its threats. However, Broomfield could only be ‘certain of the defiance of the Manchester United players’ (Harding, 1991, p.69) a club that would affectionately become known as the Outcasts FC and it was not until the beginning of August that the FA’s resolve would be tested.

Analogous, once again, to Chartism the AFPTU’s most fervent supporters would emanate from the ‘colliery districts, areas of declining handicraft industry and manufacturing towns with a strong radical tradition’ (Hearn, 1978, p.227). In these areas there was:

‘no pretense of social harmony … the miners communities … cohesive, independent, and self-contained (possessed) a strong sense of solidarity and class identity. These occupations communities, with their cultural

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distinctiveness, pride, and more practically – meeting places (which) served as the workers’ only avenue of political expression’ (Hearn, 1978, p.288).

By the beginning of August Broomfield’s approach was starting to have the desired effect. The FA were now requesting meetings with both the GFTU and the AFPTU, albeit separately. Prior to this the GFTU and the AFPTU had convened in order to formulate the latter’s demands. It would not take long, however, before a compromise, ‘an equilibrium that took some account of the subordinate groups’ (Freeden, 2003, p.20) would be reached between the FA and the Union on four separate issues. If the AFPTU agreed to such a compromise then the FA, in return, would recognise the Union, remove the ban on those players affiliated to the Union, while setting in motion the process whereby the abolishing of the maximum wage and retain-and-transfer system could become a distinct possibility.

However, by the end of August cordial relations would be concluded. At the next meeting an impasse would be reached concerning the payment of lost wages to those players who had refused to resign from the Union during the previous summer. The AFPTU were adamant that the players should receive the money owed to them, however, the FA, disagreed. The Union believed that in declining to recompense the players the FA were attempting to renege on a compromise that it secretly loathed. It now seemed as though the FA had:

‘determined on a course that appeared to mark a return to its earlier attempt to divide the Union … (as) it announced that it was willing to assist the players in forming another organization to promote their affairs, advised and financed by the FA itself. (Its purpose was) to keep the world of football somehow divorced from the real world’ (Harding, 1991, pp. 73-74).

At a third and finally meeting between the FA and the Union, the GFTU was distinctly conspicuous by its absence. Clegg of the FA started proceedings by stating that the Association had attempted to reform the financial regulations, i.e. the maximum wage, but it had been the AFPTU that had prevented this from occurring. For the AFPTU this statement would come to represent what Mannheim believed was a particular conception of ideology or in lay terms, ‘conscious distortions, calculated lies’ (Freeden, 2005, p.14). Clegg continued by stating that he expected football players to:

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‘not place money too high on their agenda because that was bad for the sport … that the clubs were not profit-making organizations, and that players ought to realize this … football was not an industry … (and) unions had no part to play in the game ‘(Harding, 1991, p.77).

However, the APFTU had determined on a course that could not be diverted. Colin Veitch, an organic intellectual and consummate diplomat, stated that the Union would continue undeterred in its current form and that the FA should remove the suspensions on the Manchester United players and pay them the lost wages. To his surprise Clegg replied by saying ‘we must not expect to have it all our own way. Life is a compromise. Nobody get’s his own way. The Players’ Union’s proposals would be considered’ (Harding, 1991, p.79). Nevertheless, as time passed compromise appeared further away than ever before as the FA procrastinated and altered their demands. In October they would brazenly request that the AFPTU secede their allegiance to the GFTU as their ‘affiliation meant that players (were) aligning themselves with the outside world; it meant accepting that football was an industry, that players were workmen. It was a gigantic leap that the FA was not prepared to make’ (Harding, 1991, p.81).

The FA’s contention, however, that football was not an industry would not be shared by their associates, the FL, who by their own admission saw football as a commercial venture (Harding, 1991, p.1). While they would disagree on this issue they would be united in their condemnation of the AFPTU’s demands by propagating ‘the myth of the greedy, grasping player. (A myth that) would prove a powerful and convenient one’ (Harding, 2009, p14). For Habermas, the propagating of such a myth or false belief ‘served to shore up certain social institutions and the relations of domination they support(ed)’ (Finlayson, 2005, p.11). For the FA hoped to receive ‘a declaration of principle from the players; an acknowledgement that they were different, that football was a special world governed by men possessing ancient and benevolent wisdom’ (Harding, 1991, p.81).

If the FA could persuade the Union to disaffiliate from the GFTU then they would be able to significantly dampen the ability of the AFPTU to ‘visibly express their grievances’ (Hearn, 1978, p.147) to the outside world thus ending a ‘more permanent and threatening kind of opposition engendered and protected by an integrated and meaningful community’ (Hearn, 1978, p.147). Once combined with the ‘restraining (of) the creative dynamic of working-class culture’ (Hearn, 1978, p.147) the FA would be able to ‘take a critical step … toward the neutralization of working class protest’ (Hearn,

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1978, p.147). The FA could then replace class conflict in English football with ‘the building up of a solidarity in a manner that could serve the Marxist end of a unified community’ (Freeden, 2003, p.13). Consequently, in October 1908, the Union would have no other choice but to concede to the demands of the FA by holding a ballot to decide if they were to remain affiliated to the GFTU. The Union voted 470-172 against affiliation. The AFPTU accepted the ruling and immediately disaffiliated from the GFTU. In response the FA removed the suspensions on the Manchester United players and paid them their lost wages.

In this regard the FA had been successful, where it had previously failed, to assert itself as the dominant social group in English football. It had managed to promote ‘beliefs and values congenial to it; (denigrate those) ideas which … challenge(d) it; (exclude) rival forms of thought; and (obscure) social reality in ways (that were) convenient to itself. (For the FA) such mystification (would allow for the) suppressing (of) social conflict’ (Eagleton, 2007,pp. 5-6) in English football. By the end of 1908 the AFPTU that remained was:

‘no puppet organization, but its very independence merely highlighted what little power it possessed and how easy it was for the football authorities either to bully it or ignore it. For the next three years it would struggle along … with high hopes but little success’ (Harding, 1991, pp. 81-82, 84).

• The continued denial of social responsibility and the suppression of working-class culture by the government and the manufacturing class, i.e. Anti-Corn Law League, and the response of the cotton workers, circa 1836 to 1847, will be explained with reference to Marcuse’s category of one-dimensionality, Gramsci’s theory of ideological hegemony, Habermas’ concept of the public sphere, Mannheim’s theory of the sociology of knowledge, Thompson’s critical conception of ideology, Marx and Engels’ theory of ideology, Marx’s theory of societal development and social revolution and the actions of the Preston Chartists.

During the early to mid-nineteenth century the city of Preston would become a ‘hotbed for discontent – a battlefield between Cotton Lords and the working class’ (LDS, 2010) – a situation that would transcend the cotton industry and be borne out in English football during the late nineteenth century. Throughout this city ‘the rise of the dark satanic mills (would come) to dominate Preston … its people and (make) England the workshop of the world’ (Gods and Radicals, 2015). In 1818 the weavers would

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endeavour, albeit unsuccessfully, to coerce the manufacturers into increasing their wages. In 1821 the spinners would go one step further by striking, albeit futilely, in response to a ten per cent reduction in wages. In 1826 the spinners and weavers would stage riots across Lancashire destroying machinery in direct response to the reduced availability of employment and fair wages. For Chartist, Alexander Challenger, the ‘cotton Lords of Preston (had become) the greatest tyrants in the country (as) it is well known that they grind their workmen down more than any other persons’ (LDS, 2010). For Marx:

‘when machinery seizes on an industry by degrees, it produces chronic misery among the operatives who compete with it. Where the transition is rapid, the effect is acute and felt by the great masses. History discloses no tragedy more horrible than the gradual extinction of the English hand-loom weavers, an extinction that was spread over several decades, and finally sealed in 1838. Many of them died of starvation, many with families vegetated for a long time on 2 1/2d. a day. Therefore, it is with the advent of machinery, that the workman for the first time brutally revolts against the instruments of labour’ (Marx, 1995, pp.264-265).

From 1801 and 1851 Preston’s population would grow from ‘11,887 to 69,361. Over forty mills (were) built … (all of) which were hopelessly overcrowded. Squalid living conditions, unreasonable hours and poor pay (would make) Lancashire … renowned for its social divides and class conflicts’ (Gods and Radicals, 2015). Geographically, Preston would be situated some thirty miles from Manchester, the principal marketplace for the purchase and sale of cotton cloth. Consequently, it would often be ‘the first port of call for immigrating agricultural workers. (This meant) fresh workers … could (be) easily replace(d) (with) mill owners (being able to) enforce somewhat lower wages’ (LDS, 2010).

In 1836 the cotton spinners would instigate another strike in Preston. This strike, the most serious up to this point, would result from a lack of work and a reduction in wages – an effect of the mechanisation of the productive process. One machine could now be operated by a solitary worker, usually a woman or child, producing a similar output to ‘two or three hundred men sixty years previously. Workers (were now) at the mercy of the Cotton Lords and the fluctuations of local and national economies’ (LDS, 2010). The spinners would demand an increase in wages of ten per cent, an amount tantamount to that received by the spinners in Bolton. While the mill owners would accept the

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spinners’ demands they would only do so on the proviso that they secede from any union to which they were affiliated. This request, a tacit effort by the mill owners to isolate the spinners from the outside world, would be declined. Subsequently, cotton mills throughout Preston would cease production with thousands of workers being temporarily unemployed. Destitution was rife throughout the city, however, after a brief period, the cotton mill owners would offer the spinners one final chance to accept their original pleas – a ten per cent increase in wages in return for their disaffiliation from the unions. The spinners would accept their offer and at the start of 1837 the cotton mills of Preston would once again commence production.

However, the toil inflicted upon the spinners would leave ‘three persons … (dead from) starvation (and) … five thousand … (suffering) long and severely from hunger and cold. As a (consequence) the Preston Operative Radical Association’ (LDS, 2010) would be formed. It would not be long before the city of Preston would become a stronghold for the Chartist movement with one of its main protagonists, Richard Marsden, a hand-loom weaver from Bamber Bridge, engaging in a ‘political discourse in which he (hoped to secure) social reform through the political process’ (King, 1981, p.V).

Four years earlier in 1832 the introduction of the Reform Act would signify the start of a liberal coalition between the manufacturing class and the government that would be characterised by a shared antipathy towards the cotton workers. However, as industrialisation proliferated throughout the country there would be a series of disagreements between the two classes that would be fought over the manufacturers’ predilection for free trade and the government’s preference for introducing protective legislation. For a brief period, however, both classes would profit from a ‘situation (that would) benefit (both their) interests, (as) a spirit of compromise … prevailed’ (Hearn, 1978, p.160) – a compromise analogous to that reached by between the FA and the FL in 1908. While the manufacturing class would allow the government to grow and preserve its political prowess, the government would enable the interests of the manufacturing class to be manifested through the passing of legislation in Parliament – legislation supportive of both their financial and developmental needs. This was an arrangement similar to the introduction of the FA’s maximum wage in 1900, a piece of legislation that would enable the FA to maintain its political prowess in English football while allowing the FL to create a ‘phenomenally successful competition’ (Harding, 1991, p.3).

By 1834 the government and the manufacturing class would be able to successfully control and contain worker opposition – a feat once again analogous to that achieved by

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the FA and the FL in 1908. While there had been many attempts made by disaffected workers to right the injustices of their society, such attempts would prove insignificant and relatively easy to contain. In conjunction with measures designed to ‘suppress the institutions and associations … of the working class … (there would be) a concerted effort by the government and various middle class groups to stamp out the recreation and ceremony’ (Hearn, 1978, p.137) so fundamental to workers and their communities. The ability of the government and the manufacturing class to impose such domination over the working class would therefore initiate the arrival of a one-dimensional society for the cotton industry whereby the ability of the workers to conceive of alternate arrangements to those provided by the establishment would be greatly hindered. Consequently, workers would now be more concerned with seeking retribution rather than endeavouring to create a more palatable society for their ranks.

During this particular period industrialisation would continue at an intense pace with capital being directed towards the invention of new machinery and the creation of bigger and more efficient cotton mills. An important factor in the exponential growth in cotton manufacture would be the government’s introduction of the 1832 Reform Act. This Act would enable the manufacturing class, as has previously been mentioned, to have greater influence over the formulation and introduction of new legislation while further excluding the working class from the decision-making process. In addition, the 1834 New Poor Law would abolish any hopes of there being a stable relationship between workers’ wages and relief received in times of hardship. In response to the 1832 Reform Act, the 1834 New Poor Law (denial of social responsibility), and the curtailment of working-class culture (worker discipline), workers from all over the country would unite together to form the Chartist movement.

Chartism was thus a national association for the working class, which was determined to effect real social change through the political process. It would, however, be ‘constrained by … the emerging one-dimensionality, the instrumentalization of culture, the constriction of the creative dynamic of play, and the dissolution of meaningful attachments to the past’ (Hearn, 1978, p.187). Similarly to the AFPTU from 1907 to 1909, Chartism would for a number of years provide meaningful and on occasion adequate resistance to the government and the manufacturing class. Their ability to do so would be predicated on the availability of:

‘social and geographic locations (i.e. Preston), which had managed to retain a playful attachment to the past. Workers from these … communities … retained

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a rebellious disposition; and they were the … most intense participants in the Chartist movement’ (Hearn, 1978, p.188).

Analogous to the AFPTU the Chartist movement would be made up of a conglomeration of local associations each possessing contrasting beliefs and objectives that would be disparate enough to inhibit the effectual organisation of the movement on a national platform. Although workers in these occupational communities were being subjected to the same barbarism, their evaluation of the situation would differ greatly. Thus their ability to critically scrutinise the established order and to offer effective alternatives to the status quo would not be favourable to the creation and acceptance of a unified, consensus of objectives. The ability of the government and the manufacturing class to successfully weaken working-class culture would mean that workers were now unable to understand the wretchedness of their situation. Powerless to ‘access to alternate standards of legitimacy … they (would resign) themselves to the existing order’ (Hearn, 1978, p.225). Were it not for occupational communities such as Preston, where workers were able to preserve ‘links with the past’ (Hearn, 1978, p.225), then the Chartist Movement would certainly have failed to effect any real social change. The availability of ‘these open social locations (would therefore sustain) many features of the protective working-class community … which (would enable) criticism of and resistance to the established system of domination’ (Hearn, 1978, p.226).

It would be during the 1830s that Richard Marsden, a handloom weaver from Bamber Bridge, Lancashire, would become leader of this ‘community … an occupational group which suffered more dramatic change … than any other’ (King, 1981, p.V). Marsden was an ‘active factory reformer, arguing for the Ten Hours Bill. (He would write) letters to … the Preston Papers and to the Star … with great cogency, his views on all the important issues of the day’ (King, 1981, pp. 18, 22). Once elected as a representative for Preston at the National Chartist Convention he would lead Preston’s participation in the Chartist movement. His main objective was to participate in a ‘political discourse in which he educated himself and his fellows in the problems of securing social reform through the political process’ (King, 1981, pp. 18, 22). In this manner Marsden’s actions would be comparable to those of Billy Meredith and Herbert Broomfield in demanding social reform through amendments to the maximum wage and the retain-and-transfer system. Marsden was thus an organic intellectual, whose function it was to ‘forge the links between theory and ideology, creating a two-way passage between political analysis and popular experience’ (Eagleton, 2007, p.120).

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Between 1838 and the 1848 Marsden would fight for the onset of political democracy through the enactment of the People’s Charter – a charter developed in direct response to the 1832 Reform Act and 1834 New Poor Law. This Charter contained Six Points: ‘manhood suffrage; equal electoral districts; the ballot; removal of the property qualification; payment of members; and annual Parliaments’ (King, 1981, p.3). The Chartists would present the People’s Charter to Parliament in 1839, 1842 and 1848, however, regardless of the thousands of ‘signatures which accompanied each presentation, Parliament refused serious consideration to the Charter’ (Hearn, 1978, p.172). During this time, Chartism, as a national movement, would only be able to petition the government for legislative changes rather than to propose anything more radical. This situation would result from the divergence in opinion between those who wished to employ physical force and those who wished to exert moral force, and those who wished to form a coalition with a subsection of disaffected middle-class manufacturers who opposed certain government legislation, i.e. the Corn Laws – a tariff on imported grain, and those, including Marsden who were antagonistic to such an idea. This would be a situation similar to that in English football between those players who wished to strike in 1908, i.e. the Outcasts FC, and those who did not.

Previously, in 1829, Marsden had migrated to Preston due to the abundance of work in the city. Over the next few years, however, the plight of the handloom weavers in Preston would become progressively worse. The introduction of the powerloom had created competition, not only with other weavers, but also with the machine itself. As a consequence wages would decrease dramatically. At its best, life for the weaver was an ever-enduring battle, at its worst starvation and abject poverty were an undeniable and inevitable reality. Similar to the professional players whose situation would drive them to the public house and to alcoholism, the weavers from Preston would excel ‘in drunkenness, fighting and profanity’ (King, 1981, p.1). In 1837 Marsden would articulate the depravity of his own situation to delegates at the National Convention of Chartists, by stating that ‘when (his baby) sought the natural nourishment (of his mother) … instead of nourishment, it drew from her nothing but her own blood’ (King, 1981, p.2). Marsden’s account was not uncommon for those in Preston and it went someway to explaining the prominence of the handloom weavers in the Chartist movement. Similar to the professional players and their demand for the removal of the maximum wage, the handloom weavers of Preston saw a ‘decent return for their labour as a right rather than a privilege … their plight (was a) glaring injustice, which only political and social reform would put right’ (King, 1981, p.2).

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Thus, in 1839 at the National Convention the movement would remain divided between those who were:

‘more cautious … (and) regarded the Convention … as a lobbying body … (and those like) Marsden … (who) saw the Convention as a counter-parliament, more legitimate because (it was ) more … representative of the people than that at Westminster’ (King, 1981, p.8).

Additionally, Marsden would seek to create a contingency plan for when the government would undoubtedly decide to reject the People’s Charter. However, an impasse would once again be reached when delegates were incapable of deciding which specific function of the National Convention they perceived to be appropriate. Marsden, however, was ‘reluctant to see the Convention restricted to a purely propagandist role’ (King, 1981, p.8). The prevarication that followed would greatly enrage Marsden and his supporters who believed it to be of upmost importance to provide ulterior measures for when their demands would not be met by the government. Measures that Marsden believed would enable the Charter to be consented to within a period of one month. However, not everybody at the Convention agreed and after raucous disagreements no contingency plan would be forthcoming. In the following months Marsden would embark upon a:

‘speaking tour of North Lancashire (where) … the impact of repression was evident. Factory operatives were … threatened with dismissal for reading the Northern Star. A young man was jailed … for posting placards announcing a Chartist meeting’ (King, 1981, p.8), i.e. an attempt to disintegrate the public sphere. Soon after the government would reject the People’s Charter by 235 votes to 46. In retaliation the National Convention of Chartists would call for strike action. However, this strategy would prove unsuccessful as the strike would only last for three days. Marsden believed that the ‘mere threat of a Chartist rising … was sufficient enough to bring success (however) this strategy of bluff was doomed to failure’ (King, 1981, p.14). Marsden maintained throughout this period that the government and the associated manufacturing class had broken the law by denying the working people their political rights through the rejection of the People’s Charter.

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He would criticise the government for being:

‘idle, abominable, accursed villains … (For) if two classes are considered … equally engaged in … production, the capitalist and the labourer, and … the former had more than enough … the latter too little, then … the labourer has been defrauded of his due’ (King, 1981, p.21).

At the end of the 1830s the economy would once again start to decline. This situation, however, would have severe consequences for the government’s alliance with the manufacturers. In some sections of the manufacturing class they would regard this economic decline as a result of the continued existence of the ‘protective control on land and corn (Corn Laws) – the primary sources of income for the landed aristocracy’ (Hearn, 1978, p.160). Once the government refused to repeal the Corn Laws the manufacturing class would seek the backing of the workers by declaring that free trade would lead to increased wages. This plan, it was hoped, would galvanise the workers into actively protesting against the government. The Anti-Corn Law League believed that in engendering the support of the populace they could accelerate the government’s decision to repeal the Corn Laws. The League, which had originated in Manchester would devote its ‘energies and … financial resources to propagandizing … that the repeal of the Corn Laws would facilitate economic growth and social stability while raising the wages of laborers’ (Hearn, 1978, p.161) – a tacit attempt by the Anti-Corn Law League to create an ‘arena in which public opinion could be stage-managed and manipulated’ (Finlayson, 2005, p.13). However, this decision would prove unsuccessful as the ‘workers (would) … shut down factories … (and) the manufacturers … unable to control the agitation (would decide to) reverse their plans. (They would now keep) their activities and opposition within the institutionalized boundaries’ (Hearn, 1978, pp. 160- 161).

Throughout this period Marsden would be a stern adversary of the Anti-Corn Law League, an organisation that had already attempted to make ‘inroads into the Preston working class’ (King, 1981, p.35). His own personal experience as a handloom weaver would open his eyes to the evils that accompanied free trade. He believed that the decline in economic prosperity had been the result of the unequal allocation of capital – a wrong that could be righted by increasing the wages of workers in times of economic hardship. Rather than remove protective legislation Marsden called for the introduction of further legislative reform whereby workers’ hours and wages would be fixed. Even though Marsden believed the Corn Laws to be ‘an evil – a gross injustice (he perceived)

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free trade (to) be a gross delusion and a bane to mankind, if it (allowed) the wolves to roam unmolested, whilst the sheep have not a single protector’ (King, 1981, p.33). Marsden’s opposition to the League would be representative of the overall Chartist movement’s ‘resistance to the comprehensive middle class assault on the organisational and the ideological integrity of Chartism itself’ (King, 1981, p.33).

In May 1842 a second petition with over twice as much support as the first would be presented to Parliament. It would, however, be given short shrift, this time by 287 votes to 49, a larger majority than before. The Chartist movement required a different approach – a change from moral to physical force, a tactic to which Marsden would consent. The Preston Chartists would agree with Marsden and declare that it be accepted as the strategy for the local area. At a meeting in Blackburn Marsden affirmed that ‘we have petitioned and implored, but in vain. We are now convinced that appeals to you are useless … (we do) not want blood, but (we are) prepared for it’ (King, 1981, p.26). Over the following months the workers’ circumstances would worsen once more as reports of wages cuts circulated in the media. The Chartist’s final appeal to moral force would fail to achieve its ultimate goal and wages would be reduced. Crowds of disenfranchised workers would rage all over Lancashire with four killed and countless more injured. Many had paraded into Preston in the hope that they could prevent the cotton mills from opening.

In just over a week cotton manufacture throughout the North West would cease production – a general strike had been called. Divisions within the Preston Chartists would once again resurface as some of the strikers desired wages to return to those paid prior to 1840 while others were determined to continue strike action until the government conceded and accepted the People’s Charter. While the Preston Chartists would adopt the latter policy ‘any thought of making a return to work conditional of the enactment of the Charter was soon abandoned’ (King, 1981, p.31). The Chartist movement as a whole would perceive the aforementioned wage cuts as an act of malevolence by the Anti-Corn Law League deemed necessary to incite public disturbances for the purposes of the coercing the government into repealing the Corn Laws. While the general strike would not achieve its principle aim of inducting the People’s Charter into law or even the relatively conciliatory demand of fixed wages and working hours Marsden believed that the Preston Chartists had learnt a lesson. They would ‘know how to proceed in future, and no persuasion or entreaty (would) dissuade them therefrom’ (King, 1981, p.32).

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Over the next few years economic decline would be replaced with economic prosperity. While this would be of benefit to the working poor, and in particular the Preston Chartists of whom the majority were handloom weavers, the opportunity to engage the interest of the government into countenancing pleas of political reform would be greatly reduced. Throughout the beginning of the 1840s Preston would be conspicuously absent from the National Convention of Chartists. Preston’s inactivity would reflect the general lethargy of the Chartist movement on a national scale. The movement as a whole had been unable to formulate a nationwide, cohesive plan of action – they had failed to petition the government into enacting the People’s Charters on two separate occasions and the use of physical force had been easily enough contained by the army. Towards the tail end of 1845 there would be many beleaguered and impoverished cotton workers living in Lancashire. ‘Mill mania (had given) way to depression (with) two-thirds of the handloom weavers in Preston (being) unemployed in 1846’ (King, 1981, p.39). Times would, however, improve, albeit slightly, and by the beginning of 1847 fifty per cent of all the cotton mills in Preston would reopen. Of the other fifty per cent, eleven would not work at full capacity while the other eight would cease production altogether. As a result wages would once again be reduced. The Preston Chronicle declared that ‘such a circumstance (had) never been known in the history of manufactures in this town’ (King, 1981, p.39).

The deprivation that had resided in Preston would take a great personal toil on Marsden’s life. One of his daughters would die after contracting tuberculosis as a result of the poor working conditions and arduous work schedule. Consequently, his personal heartache would lead him to reconsider his aversion to the trade union movement. He had always been highly mistrustful of the unions as he believed they had inflicted their own brand of misery and oppression over those whom they purported to protect. However, after further decline in economic prosperity Marsden believed that any measures that could alleviate the suffering of the workers should be sort out. Thus in 1845 ‘the newly-formed Preston Powerloom Weavers’ Union (would have) Richard Marsden as its secretary’ (King, 1981, p.40).

Marsden would offer the Union’s members a Weltanschauung by urging them to strike against those mill owners who reduced wages below the Preston average. He would declare ‘we are not inanimate machines … the power to think, to reason, and reflect is ours; sufficient, at least to enable us to discriminate between overpowering necessity … and unfeeling human avarice on the other’ (King, 1981, p.40). However, the achievements of Marsden and the Union would be relatively slight and as such they

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would fail to create a unified sociology of knowledge for the cotton workers of Preston. The overabundance of unskilled workers who had descended on the city during times of economic prosperity had, as previously mentioned, meant that disgruntled workers could be easily replaced. The threat of strike action would have little effect on the manufacturers of Preston – a city historically synonymous for low wages and a submissive workforce. Despite an initial display of enthusiasm Marsden’s efforts had achieved very little – he had failed to unmask and demystify the dissimulative nature of the government and the manufacturing classes’ ideological domination – a feat that would have enabled him to expose their false aspirations.

Reluctantly, Marsden would leave Preston for Blackburn where he would become the secretary of the Blackburn Weavers’ Union. This Union had already confirmed its prowess through an ‘ultimately successful strike, against … one of the town’s largest manufacturers (concerning) infringements of the Factory Acts. The Blackburn manufacturers (had) proved willing to negotiate and even to permit the settling of serious disputes by arbitration’ (King, 1981, p.41). However, while progress was occurring in Blackburn the situation in Preston would not improve. Marsden would not concern himself with whether or not Preston would join the ‘National Trades Union … all he wanted was that they should be united’ (King, 1981, p.41). Regrettably, they would not and thus ‘North Lancashire Chartism died’ (King, 1981, p.44).

In 1846 the government would seek a compromise with the manufacturing class by repealing the Corn Laws and introducing the 1847 Factory Act (Ten Hours Act), i.e. ‘stricter enforcement of the restricted workday rules for women and children. While the manufacturing class would support the repeal of the Corn Laws and oppose the factory legislation, the converse was so for the government’ (Hearn, 1978, p.161). In 1848 a final petition, with over sixty thousand signatures, would be brought before Parliament by the Chartists. Unsurprisingly the government would once again reject their pleas. Writing in the New York Tribune in 1854 Marx would declare that:

‘the eyes of the working classes are now fully opened, they begin to cry: Our St. Petersburg is at Preston! Indeed, the last eight months have seen a strange spectacle in the town — a standing army of 14,000 men and women subsidized by the trades unions and workshops of all parts of the United Kingdom, to fight out a grand social battle for mastery with the capitalists, and the capitalists of Preston, on their side, held up by the capitalists of Lancashire. Whatever other shapes this social struggle may hereafter assume, we have seen only the

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beginning of it. It seems destined to nationalize itself and present phases never before seen in history; for it must be borne in mind that though temporary defeat may await the working classes, great social and economical laws are in operation which must eventually insure their triumph’ (Marxist Internet Archive, 2016).

However, Preston would fail ‘to become Britain’s revolutionary capital’ (Gods and Radicals, 2015). The politics of the 1850s would be conducted in a similar manner to those in the preceding decades. While the manufacturing class would continue to focus on matters concerned with improving their productive capacities rather than matters pertaining to politics, the government would concern itself with the introduction of legislation deemed necessary for the furtherment of free trade and industrial capitalism. While the Preston Chartists would ultimately fail to coerce the government into enacting the People’s Charter their actions would eventually herald the introduction of the 1847 Factory Act and the ‘acceptance of the vote for the working men under the Reform Act of 1867’ (Gods and Radicals, 2015).

Ultimately, by the late 1860s the working-class resistance to the government and the manufacturing class would be sufficiently contained. Rather than continue in an insurrectionary manner, in a state of constant hostility, the working-class aversion to nineteenth century industrial capitalist society would be replaced by a reluctant:

‘acceptance of the established order. The explanation (for this resided) on the demonstration of one-dimensionality. Beginning in the late 1830s … the government and the middle class actively allied to undermine … the traditions, of working-class culture. In conjunction with advancing industrialization … this effort effected a suppression of imagination, and thereby facilitated further industrial and economic growth. (Thus) working-class social protest became aimless and disorganized (and) no transcendent criteria capable of guiding social actions were forthcoming. The ideological consciousness of the working-class community lacked viable and meaningful alternatives to existing arrangements to establish standards for discrediting society. The majority of workers (accepted) the status quo. The worker was isolated in history as well as in society’ (Hearn, 1978, pp. 231-232).

In 1870 Marx would develop his theory of societal development and social revolution based on his observations of English society over the preceding three decades and ‘by an

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immanent critique of classical political economy, Owenite Socialism, and, to a lesser extent, Chartism’ (Hearn, 1978, p.244). Marx perceived that the structural antagonisms inherent to industrial capitalism, between labour and capital, would lead to a working- class revolution, a ‘necessary revolution, one necessarily arising out of the contradictions inherent to capitalism. But class struggle did not erupt in England’ (Hearn, 1978, p.246). Marx’s immanent critique of England’s classic political economy thus sustained:

‘his hope for a revolutionary working class … (which would come) at the expense of inaccurate analysis. (This analysis, however, was) too narrowly defined; it must (therefore) be capable of examining cultural domination as well as economic and political domination’ (Hearn, 1978, p.259).

In the following chapter detailing English football, from 1957 to 1963, I will show how the professional players and their representatives the PFA would, unlike their cotton counterparts, successfully overcome the economic, political and cultural domination of the FA and the FL by coercing them into abolishing the maximum wage in 1961 and the retain-and-transfer system in 1963 – a feat that would come to represent a working-class revolution in English football. While the aforementioned working-class social movements, i.e. Owenite Socialism, the Preston Chartists, etc. would fail to achieve their ultimate insurrectionary goals of social and factory reform due to an inability to imbue the masses with a ‘spirit of generalization and revolutionary passion’ (Hearn, 1978, p.259), a necessary attribute for a revolutionary working class, the PFA lead by Jimmy Hill and then Cliff Lloyd would be able to achieve such an endeavour.

In conclusion, however, it would be remiss to downplay the significance and influence that organisations and individuals, including the Preston Chartists and Richard Marsden, were to have on the PFA and Jimmy Hill. In some respects, the professional players and their Union representatives, the PFA, would owe a significant debt of gratitude to their cotton counterparts for the provision of a socio-political framework, however distorted and inadequate. If such a framework were applied and adapted to English football, then the PFA could eventually have ‘a meaningful presence in the running of the game’ (Harding and Taylor, 2003, p, XIII), with the professional players evolving from soccer slaves to soccer stars.

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Chapter Five: 1957-1961 Introduction

During this particular period the maximum wage and the retain-and-transfer system would continue to be enforced by the FA and the FL. In response the professional players would attempt to defy the FA through the receipt of illegal wages and bonuses from the very same ‘directors (of League clubs) who (would go) to London every year to vote in favour of the maximum wage (and then return) to their clubs to sanction illegal payments’ (Inglis, 1985, p.117). The need for such payments would be predicated on the continued presence of the maximum wage and the retain-and-transfer system. For if it ‘had it not been for illegal extras, many players may have been forced to give up’ (Inglis, 1985, p.10) playing altogether. These payments (would change):

‘hands in a variety of ways. Payments might be presented to players wives in the form of jewellery … another ploy was to let a player buy his club’s house for pittance, then a few years later he would sell it at the true market value for an enormous profit’ (Inglis, 1985, p.116).

Accordingly this chapter will focus, specifically, on the receipt and payment of illegal extras to professional players by their clubs, the George Eastham court case (Keeton, 1972, pp.134-139), and the FA and FL’s joint investigation into the financial improprieties of Sunderland football club. An investigation that would go:

‘badly wrong, and for the first time in the history of the game the FA (would find) itself in the dock … on the losing side. Football’s law-makers (would be) found to be their own law-breakers, and (as a result) professional football (in England would) never (be) the same’ (Keeton, 1972, pp.134-139).

In addition, attention would be directed towards understanding the role of the AFPTU/PFA (the Players’ Union post-1958) in relation to the George Eastham court case, and the FA/FL’s investigation into Sunderland’s financial improprieties, with specific focus on the behaviour of Jimmy Hill (Chairman) and Cliff Lloyd (Secretary) in enabling the Players’ Union to use these incidents as mechanisms with which to overcome the ideological domination of the governing bodies of English football. Throughout this chapter the imposing of culture domination over the professional players would be represented by the FA’s attempt to eradicate the working-class culture

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of illicit wages and bonuses. Furthermore, economic domination would be represented by the continued presence of the maximum wage, while political domination would be represented, first, by the inability of the professional players to vote for the abolition of the maximum wage and retain-and-transfer system, secondly, by the continued lack of player representation at either of the governing bodies (Harding, 1991, p.42), and, thirdly, the FA and the FL’s aversion to allowing the professional players to seek legal council during instances of disciplinary action.

In 1961, over sixty years since it was first introduced, the PFA would successfully coerce the FA, through threats of strike action, into abolishing the maximum wage, while in 1963, with the aid of the legal system, the FL would be forced into removing the retain-and-transfer system after it was deemed a restraint of trade and therefore unenforceable. This outcome would represent the arrival of a ‘working-class revolution … a necessary revolution (resulting) from the irreducible structural antagonisms between capital and labor’ (Hearn, 1978, p.246) – antagonisms that had existed in English football since 1893.

• The ability of the AFPTU/PFA, and, in particular Hill and Lloyd to overcome the economic, political and cultural domination of the FA and the FL will be explained with reference to Shapiro’s concept of a two-dimensional society, the natural law ideology of the eighteenth century, Gramsci’s theory of ideological hegemony, Habermas’ concept of the public sphere, Mannheim’s theory of the sociology of knowledge, Thompson’s critical conception of ideology, Marx and Engels’ theory of ideology and Marx’s theory of societal development and social revolution.

In 1977 Alan Hardaker would write:

‘Nothing in my time as secretary of the Football League has been of greater significance to the professional game than the removal of the maximum wage and the end of the old retain-and-transfer system. The revolution took place in the early 1960s and, according to the phrasemakers, freed the slaves and carried football into the twentieth century. It was a bloodless revolution but it left football with bruises and scars that are still painful … It was a long and bitter fight, full of heroes and villains, but I think posterity may have difficulty in deciding exactly in which role to cast many of its principal figures. Too many people fought from deeply entrenched positions. Minds were closed and there was no place for compromise’ (Hardaker, 1977, p.77).

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In 1957 English football would still remain a one-dimensional industrial capitalist society characterised by a denial of social responsibility and a suppression of working- class culture. The League clubs’ subverting of the FA’s maximum wage, would on the surface, appear to be a benevolent act committed for the benefit of the professional players, however, in reality it was a decision predicated on the former’s desire to maximise profit. While the FA were fully aware that clubs were breaching the maximum wage, the FA and the FL, akin to the government and the manufacturers, were united in their shared antipathy towards the players and their Union.

Prior to 1957 and the investigation into Sunderland’s financial affairs, professional players had never been consulted as to, whether or not, the maximum wage or the retain- and-transfer system should remain in situ. In effect the FA and the FL had actively sought to exclude the players from the decision-making process – a situation that would confirm their positions as the dominant social groups in English football. The players were thus rendered an inert and apolitical body of men incapable of formulating methods with which to sufficiently challenge and overcome the ideological domination of the governing bodies. They possessed neither the authority nor the influence necessary to function as a check on the legitimacy of the powers of the FA and the FL. British sports historian, Simon Inglis, believed that the:

‘single most important reason why the maximum wage remained in force until 1961 was that no-one challenged it in a court of law. It was simple as that, and one of the reasons why it took so long to be scrutinized was that very few individuals were prepared to expose the situation for the sham it undoubtedly was. As Jimmy Guthrie argued, public opinion would never be won over as long as footballers and officials concealed the true state of affairs in a conspiracy of fear, self-interest and obedience to their masters at Preston (FL) and Lancaster Gate (FA)’ (Inglis, 1985, p.117).

Fortunately, for the players there would be ‘a sufficient number of people, albeit small, (who) did want to blow the lid off the whole system. The Players’ Union was developing the muscle … but (what they) needed was someone of substance’ (Inglis, 1985, pp. 118- 119) – someone capable of entering into the intelligentsia of English football, a person who could:

‘provide a lead for the Football League and the FA to investigate. If one club could be found guilty of breaking the rules then surely, with an orchestrated

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campaign, it (would be) relatively simple to involve all the others and eliminate the rule itself’ (Inglis, 1985, p.119).

For the AFPTU, this person would be Jimmy Hill, a man who was to become the chairmen of the Union in January 1957 after the incumbent, Jimmy Guthrie, was relieved of his post. The:

‘bearded Fulham player whose middle class upbringing had not given him the nerve to ask for illegal extras … had other advantages; experience in business, youth, and the willingness to work for the Union without pay’ (Inglis, 1985, p.121).

Hill would envision a future for English football characterised by a distinct lack of the maximum wage and the retain-and-transfer system. The aim of his ‘revolutionary practice ... (was to) elaborate and make explicit the potentially creative principles implicit in the practical understanding of the oppressed – to raise these otherwise inchoate, ambiguous elements of (the players’) experience to the status of a coherent philosophy or world view’ (Eagleton, 2007, p.118). In order to achieve his objective he would need to ‘break the grip of the football authorities on wages and bonuses (by whipping) up public indignation … (and) the Sunderland case would certainly do that’ (Inglis, 1985, p.121). Hill would seek to construct a public sphere – a sphere that would enable everyone in English football to ‘participate as equals in rational discussion in pursuit of truth and common good’ (Finlayson, 2005, p.12) – one standing in stark contrast to public sphere of yesteryear where participation had been restricted to only a ‘small group of educated men of means’ (Finlayson, 2005, p.12). Historically, the ‘ideal of a universally accessible, voluntary association of private people, coming together as equals in unconstrained debate … was Utopian for sure but it was a Utopia that (Hill believed) was worth pursuing’ (Finlayson, 2005, pp.12-13). While such a Utopia would never be fully realised during the nineteenth century in England it would become a ‘social and political reality’ (Finlayson, 2005, p13) for English football, post-1957.

However, while some in Parliament agreed with Hill’s vision for English football, i.e. W. Curly Mallalieu, an organic intellectual who would advocate for the formation of ‘a Royal Commission to examine the affairs of the football industry (there would be others, including) R.A. Butler (a traditional intellectual, who would) declare that he preferred to leave the affairs of the football industry alone’ (Inglis, 1985, pp.130-131). For individuals such as Butler ‘football was (still) a world within a world, and the (FA) were

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still its rulers’ (Harding, 2009, p.14). The Times newspapers would concur with Butler’s assertions by declaring that ‘Mallalieu’s suggestion (were) ridiculous. Parliamentary intervention would not, said the newspaper, solve football’s problems’ (Inglis, 1985, p.131).

At the beginning of the 1957/58 season the FA would be alerted to the financial discrepancies of Sunderland. Astonishingly the club were found to have spent £3000 on the purchase of straw, a material used to protect football pitches during the winter months. However, Hardaker would discover that:

‘£3000 would have supplied Sunderland with enough straw for the next twenty- five league seasons. In order to finance illegal payments the club had apparently placed orders with two contractors … far in excess of their actual requirements. When the suppliers then delivered only the required amounts Sunderland were given credit notes. These notes were cashed at a later date and the extra money, which never appeared in the accounts, was paid over to the players. This had been going on for five years’ (Inglis, 1985, p.12).

Subsequently, a joint commission of the FA and the FL would punish Sunderland by fining them £5000 with two directors being given sine die bans. The directors were informed that the very ‘same people (who) were acting as jury (would) later (be acting) as judges’ (Inglis, 1985, p.124) – a contravention of the FA’s own regulations. The directors would ask for legal representation, however, they would be refused – an example of political domination as the Sunderland directors’ rival form of thought would be excluded from subverting that of the governing bodies’. However:

‘the FA had not finished with Sunderland. The players had yet to be examined, and on April 25 five on them faced another joint FA-Football League commission. These men were named as having received illegal signing-on bonuses. It was probably the single most important confrontation between players and the authorities for a disciplinary action … Jimmy Hill … was on hand to advise the players. A Manchester firm of solicitors … (would provide) crucial legal advice. Hill had already made an impact … and prompted Maurice Smith of The People to comment that he was the one man who could blow the Football League’s stubborn, stupid defence of a rotten system sky high’ (Inglis, 1985, p.126).

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While Hardaker, a traditional intellectual, was acutely aware that changes to the way professional football in England was run and organised were necessary, he would remain ‘loyal to ancient League creeds’ (Harding, 1991, p.276). He maintained that the maximum wage and the retain-and-transfer system were essential for preventing English football from regressing towards ‘the chaotic conditions that existed before the League was formed’ (Harding, 1991, p.276) in 1888. While he believed wholly in the maximum wage he did concede that it would be necessary to increase it:

‘Twenty pounds a week in a season, and £17 in summer, was no kind of money for men who gave pleasure to millions. But the agreement the players (would eventually win would allow) them to take more out of the game than it has to give. That is a fact. I would have retained a maximum wage – a good, healthy one related to the cost of living and possibly graded through the divisions’ (Hardaker, 1977, pp.77-78).

Hardaker stated that he had offered his proposal of an increased maximum wage to the League Management Committee and he believed that it would have been a compromise that ‘would have required very little alteration and … (one that) the players would have accepted’ (Hardaker, 1977, p.78). However, hegemony would not be reached between the FA, the FL and the Players’ Union. Instead ‘all kinds of men and interests, so many of them conflicting, had a hand in giving the game its push towards financial lunacy. The men that Hardaker was referring to where Jimmy Hill, and Cliff Lloyd who were described as being a gift from the gods for the Players’ Union’ (Inglis, 1985, pp. 78, 126-127). Similarly, C.E. Sutcliffe of the FL, another traditional intellectual, and an individual who had been so instrumental in coercing the FA into introducing the maximum wage in 1900, would never consent to the removal of the maximum wage and the retain-and-transfer system. For he believed in:

‘such ancient prejudices (that) had (allowed) certain the myths (to survive) intact. Even the dispute of 1960-61, which saw one of the two freedoms gained at last, would not undermine those myths. Reform was achieved in the teeth of dogged, bitter, often resentful opposition – opposition that would eventually sour any taste of victory’ (Harding, 1991, pp.276-277).

On 25 April at the hearing of the Sunderland players, to the Union’s surprise, ‘Hill and Lloyd (would be) allowed to attend … (as up) until that point players had always been denied any form of representation at official hearings’ (Inglis, 1985, pp.126-127). The

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FA and the FL would now be unable to exclude the PFA’s rival form of thought from challenging their own, an arrangement that would have a considerable impact on the ability of the governing bodies to impose their ideological domination and to maintain their positions as the dominant social groups in English football.

The presence of Hill and Lloyd would therefore represent the initial stages in the Union’s journey towards unmasking and demystifying the dissimulative nature of the maximum wage and retain-and-transfer system. The Union would now be afforded the ability to:

‘provide an interpretation of the world for their society. As societies evolved and social mobility increased, the members of an intelligentsia began to be recruited from a more varied social background. They were no longer associated with a determinate and closed body’ (Freeden, 2003, p.14).

For Hardaker ‘the drums of war could now be heard. The players’ thoughts were being cleared and concentrated by their union … and they were led by men who meant business. Hill (was) a great talker (and) a practised charmer (while) Cliff Lloyd (was) a man of sound convictions … to whom professional players owed a very great deal, probably more than to any other man’ (Hardaker, 1977, p.79). During the hearing the joint commission would ask each and every player about the practice of the illegal wages. The players, however, would receive orders from Hill, Lloyd and the Union’s solicitors to keep their council and to not answer any of the committee’s questions. In response the commission would hand out sine die bans to all five players.

However, by banning the players the joint commission had made a grave error of judgment:

‘A young clerk at (the PFA’s solicitors) went through the rules of the League and the FA, knowing that in order to challenge the commission’s decision he would have to prove that either the laws of natural justice, or the rules of either body had been broken. The clerk discovered, the conduct of the commission (had) twice contravened (the) rules … (as) any commission wholly or partly appointed by (the FA and the FL) … did not possess the power to suspend a player … sine die. The commission could investigate like a detective but not pass sentences like a judge … (they) had broken the very rules of the very bodies, which set it up. (This was) just the breakthrough the union was seeking.

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For the first time in history, the FA (would) be in the dock itself … and guilty. The FA and the Football League (would) recognize their mistakes and (pay) damages out of court to the five players’ (Inglis, 1985, p.136).

Three days after the hearing, in a bold move, the Union would ask the FA and FL to examine the whole issue of illegal wages and bonuses – the joint commission duly accepted. By the time the enquiry began on 8 May Hill had travelled the length and breadth of the country requesting that all players who had received illicit payments confess by signing a document prepared by the Union. Hill was determined to acquire the signatures of over 1000 players. The document stated:

‘We the undersigned are prepared to swear an oath that we have received illegal payments (however small) in contravention of the rules of the FA and the Football League. It is understood that this document we have signed will not be produced to any person or body other than the Association of Football Players’ and Trainers’ Union without prior consent of the signatories unless

1. it is produced in order to benefit professional footballers generally and 2. it (or copies of it) have been signed by no less than 100 persons’ (Inglis, 1985, p.132).

In this respect, I believe that in collecting the signatures of those players who would admit to receiving illegal payments Hill was attempting to imbue the professional players with a ‘spirit of generalization and revolutionary passion’ (Hearn, 1918, p.245) – attributes, that according Marx, Chartism lacked. Hill maintained that virtually every player he had approached and asked to sign the document had done so. However, reports would circulate in the media ‘that many players had in fact refused to sign’ (Inglis, 1985, p.131). I would suggest that these reports were a tacit attempt by the media to stage-manage and manipulate public opinion. Maurice Smith of The People stated that ‘the drive to collect signatures was in reality a mess, (while) Roy Peskett of the (Daily Mail) called the drive for signatures a flop and reported that only forty professionals had signed the document’ (Inglis, 1985, pp.131-132).

This undermining of the Union would be amplified by further reports that ‘one of the Sunderland players had refused to sign the document and (that) there was a rift in the dressing room’ (Inglis, 1985, pp.131-132). The player in question was Len Shakleton who was quoted as saying that the only way ‘to change the wage and bonus structure

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was for the players to strike … signing confessions would not, he said, help anyone’ (Inglis, 1985, p.133) – a divergence in opinion similar to that of the Chartist movement between those who wished to exert moral force and those who wished to employ physical force.

However, Hill would not be dissuaded in his determination to achieve the necessary reforms. He vociferously declared:

‘Why should footballers, as top entertainers, be degraded in their efforts to seek a decent reward for their skills? Why could a footballer not become like any other professional entertainer, or indeed any other professional sportsman?’ (Inglis, 195, p.133).

If nothing else the Union’s campaign ‘had roused public opinion to an awareness of this argument, even if not everyone agreed with it’ (Inglis, 195, p.133). What was now patently obvious for the players was that if they desired economic, political and cultural reform ‘badly enough, (then) they could achieve it; and now, with a Union Management Committee capable, intelligent and well-organized enough to lead them, they appeared willing to try’ (Harding, 1991, p.277). Thus, on 17 May all five of the Sunderland players stated that they had intentionally accepted illegal payments from the club. The joint commission responded by rescinding the sine die bans – a signal, if ever there was one, that the ideas of the FA and FL were now no longer the ‘the ruling ideas’ (Freeden, 2003, p.6). As early as November League clubs would seek to offer the players a compromise over wages. However, there would be:

‘no mention of substantial changes to either the maximum wage and retain and transfer system. (As a result) the offer was rejected out of hand by the Union … the Union felt confident enough to issue a strike notice to take effect on 21 January 1961. By 9 January, the League moved swiftly and substantial gains seemed possible. Five more concessions were offered: longer playing contracts; the abolition of the maximum wage; the setting up of a joint committee; a minimum retaining wage per division; and testimonials for players every eight years’ (Harding, 1991, pp.277-278).

The PFA’s threat of strike action had achieved its intended to goal. For Hardaker the ‘ultimate weapon (of the PFA had been) a strike (and), of course … the PFA used this threat as their final push’ (Hardaker, 1977, p.82). Although a strike would never

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materialise, Hardaker thought that if it had it would have been of benefit, not only to the players and the PFA, but also to the FA and the FL:

‘It could have been a very good thing. It would have cleared the air (with) the two sides (being) forced to get together and to consider the whole argument from a wider and less selfish point of view … sooner rather than later football would have been the winner’ (Hardaker, 1977, p.82).

Hardaker in this sense, akin to an organic, rather than a traditional intellectual was now yearning for an amalgam of ideological hegemony and a unified sociology of knowledge. He concluded by stating that the League clubs ‘had showed no collective strength (and that they) were wrong in their attitude … wrong in the way they handled their case, and (as a result) public opinion was (now) against them. Their one hope of salvaging anything was compromise’ (Hardaker, 1977, p.81).

While the manufacturing class during the mid-nineteenth century would take a resolute stance in confronting Chartism, a movement, which had failed to establish a ‘solid cohesion and agreement necessary for a viable national organization’ (Hearn, 1978, p.225), the FL in stark contrast would be in complete disarray. Whereas some were alarmed by the PFA’s threat of strike action, others were ‘convinced … that the PFA was bluffing, (and) stuck to the feudal belief that the players should get absolutely nothing’ (Hardaker, 1977, p.82). Hill and Lloyd, on the other hand, had managed to instil a sense of unity within the players, ‘emphasised by a series of players’ meeting held at key centres up and down the country’ (Hardaker, 1977, p.82). While Chartism could not be regarded as a ‘viable national organization, which (had provided) criticism of and resistance to the established system of domination’ (Hearn, 1978, p.226) the PFA most definitely could be – a statement supported ‘in early 1961 (when the FA and the FL) would make the historic decision to remove the maximum wage’ (Hardaker, 1977, p.82).

As a direct consequence of Hill and Lloyd’s ‘skillful negotiations and a threatened players’ strike the maximum wage (would now be) deleted from the rule book, after sixty years’ (Inglis, 1985, p.137). Such an outcome would signify the arrival of a ‘unified sociology of knowledge (in English football) produced by (Hill and Lloyd – a situation that would enable) social truths ... of the real world to be extracted’ (Freeden, 2003, p.15). While the removal of the maximum wage would signify the beginning of the end to economic domination it would also put paid to the FA’s ability to impose

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cultural domination over the professional players as the FA would no longer be able to suppress the working-class culture of illegal payments designed to subvert the maximum wage.

In his assessment of 1961, Hardaker believed that ‘the players (had) won because they were able to manipulate public opinion, and because Jimmy Hill had used the press in a way that he, Hardaker, had not been allowed to by his League bosses’ (Harding, 1991, p.277). Hardaker continued by stating that the:

PFA (had been) wiping the floor with the League when it came to public relations. At the end of almost every meeting … there (would) be no statement by either side to the media. I knew only too well, however, that Jimmy Hill was giving the PFA’s case a thorough airing to any reporter prepared to lend him an ear. The outcome was that only one side’s view was consistently put to the press, television and radio. I did not blame the media boys at all. They were simply getting what stories they could, and in the absence of anything concrete from the League, these were often slanted in the players’ favour. The PFA’s campaign was a good one and their version of truth was available night and day – an advantage which clouded opinion in the House of Commons as well as on the terraces’ (Hardaker, 1977, p.81).

While the PFA had successfully fought for the abolition of the maximum wage the FL’s retain-and-transfer system would still remain firmly in place. However, in January 1961 a meeting between Hardaker, Hill, Lloyd, and ‘Ministry of Labour Conciliation Officer, Tom Claro’ (Harding, 1991, p.278) would be convened. After the meeting Hill and Lloyd would be convinced that an agreement pertaining to the removal of the retain-and- transfer system had been reached:

‘The agreement in respect of the retain and transfer system suggested that, once a player refused terms offered by him, he was placed on the transfer list … if not transferred … he was retained on a monthly contract. Thus the retain element of the system appeared considerably weakened, and it seemed that a player now had much more say in his future than had previously been the case’ (Harding, 1991, pp.279-280).

Hill and the PFA understandably thought that another historic battle had been won, however, they would be mistaken. Once in receipt of the potential agreement the League

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clubs, without exception, ‘rejected the deal completely ... come what may, the Football League remaining loyal to ancient creeds, (would) not alter the present retain and transfer system … it must remain an integral part of the League system’ (Harding, 1991, p.280).

While clubs had been prepared, albeit reluctantly, to agree to the abolition of the maximum wage they could not go as far as to consent to the removal of the retain-and- transfer system. The professional players, after further discussions with the PFA, would retaliate by threatening strike action once more if their demands were not met. At this point Hardaker still thought that a compromise could be reached between the concerned parties and after a brief period he assumed that a final arrangement on the issue had been reached – an arrangement that would be as follows:

‘If a player who refused to sign a new contract was not transferred by 31 August he could have his case dealt with, on his own application, by the Management Committee. It was in my opinion a fair compromise. The new arrangement … (gave) both club and player protection whilst maintaining the club’s right to retain’ (Hardaker, 1997, p.85).

However, Hardaker would greatly misread the situation and it would soon become abundantly clear that ‘the clubs (were sticking) rigidly to their belief that any modification of the retain-and-transfer system would seriously undermine the League’s foundations’ (Hardaker, 1977, p.85). Unbeknownst, however, to the clubs they:

‘were being overtaken smoothly on the inside. The events which led to the celebrated Eastham case in the High Court were already in motion. The moment one player stepped forward to challenge the legality of the old retain-and- transfer system its days were numbered’ (Hardaker, 1977, p.86).

Prior to the Eastham case, however, clubs would still be clinging to the ‘old, weary arguments … that without the retain safeguard players would hold the clubs to ransom … and that no one else understood the system like they did’ (Harding, 1991, p.281). Consequently, Burnley football club would vote in favour of ignoring the new arrangement altogether, while the rest would consent to a resolution that would render the current retain-and-transfer system totally untouched, i.e. if a player rejected an offer of a new contract the incumbent club could still retain his services, indefinitely, if they so desired. After numerous additional meetings no agreement would be reached between

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the PFA and the FL and as a consequence Hill would resign from the Union. His days at the Union were now over.

Hill’s ‘impact (however) had been tremendous: without exaggeration, it can be said that he introduced the Players’ Union to the modern world’ (Harding, 1991, p.281) – a Utopian version of English football characterised by a partial unified sociology of knowledge, the opening of the public sphere and the removal of the maximum wage. Prior to Hill’s chairmanship of the PFA ‘few people outside of football (and many inside!) had ever heard of the Union. The Great Communicator changed all that … Players at last realized they could get better terms from their clubs – thanks to a brilliantly fought case by Jimmy Hill’ (Harding, 1991, p.281).

Unsurprisingly, without Hill, the PFA in its current form appeared incapable of generating the publicity it needed in order to once again tackle the retain-and-transfer system. Hill’s replacement, Tommy Cummings, appeared reluctant to give up on the idea that a deal could be reached. However, ‘the mood of militancy so crucial to success thus far had almost evaporated’ (Harding, 1991, p.282) – a situation analogous to that of the Preston Chartists in 1848. Hill’s ability to challenge and subvert the maximum wage had been predicated on his ability to garner the support of the professional players. However, as a result of his actions, the players were now able to obtain higher wages – a development that had weakened the ‘commitment of the top players to sustained militant action. Players now had a great deal more to lose, and without their participation strike action was pointless’ (Harding, 1991, p.282). The decision was therefore taken to tread a different path and to take their case against the FL’s retain-and-transfer system to the High Court.

Prior to 1961, however, the whole of the PFA’s management committee had been replaced by new members. ‘Now serving were Harry Hough of Bradford; Jack Campbell of Blackburn Rovers; Ian Dargie of Brentford; Tony Ingham of Queen’s Park Rangers; Bill Roost of Bristol Rovers; Tommy Cummings of Burnley and Royston Wood of Leeds’ (Harding, 2009, p.147). This configuration of workers would be comparable to Chartism, which in itself was a ‘conglomeration of regional movements and organizations. (However, while) the differences between (these organisations was for Chartism) significant enough to impede effective organization on the national level’ (Hearn, 1978, p.225) the PFA would now consist of members:

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‘like Hough, Ingham and Roost (who) were of the same generation as Lloyd and shared the same point of view. Personal friendships, in fact were a key factor in the success of the new committee. Harry Hough was also on good personal terms with Cliff Lloyd. (He had been) a miner during the war (Harding, 2009, p.147), i.e. an occupational community with a strong radical tradition. Hough, Campbell and the rest of the management committee were thus much more of a team than previous groups had been. With Lloyd’s administrative shakeup ensuring the lines of communication were simplified and decisions taken rapidly and confidently there was a general sense of improvement’ (Harding, 2009, p.147).

Thus, in April 1960 a unified PFA would once again seek to challenge the FL on the retain-and-transfer system. As luck would have it, George Eastham would at the same time be demanding, albeit unsuccessfully, that he be freed from his contract at Newcastle United. Eastham would subsequently decide to seek employment away from football and in July he would approach the League’s Management Committee asking if they could arrange his transfer away from the club. The Committee, however, would deem that the dispute was of no concern to them and that the matter should be resolved by Eastham and Newcastle United alone. However, ‘as the argument dragged on and the 1960-61 football season began, the PFA saw in the Eastham affair a rare opportunity to challenge the legal nature of the retain and transfer system’ (Harding, 1991, p.283).

In mid-October the Union’s solicitors would hand Newcastle United a summons stating that in preventing Eastham from transferring away from the club they had hindered his ability to earn a living and ‘that in doing so the club (had been) acting in (an) unlawful restraint of trade, for which Eastham wished to claim damages’ (Harding, 1991, p.284). After a short period Newcastle United would concede defeat in the matter and Eastham would be released from his contract. Soon after Newcastle would accept an offer of £47,000 from Arsenal for the player’s services and he would be able to resume his career once more.

Justifiably, after his transfer to Arsenal, Eastham appeared reluctant to pursue further action against the FL. However, Lloyd ‘impressed upon him the crucial importance of the action for all footballers, i.e., the realisation of a unified sociology of knowledge for all professional players, and to his credit, Eastham consented to allow the action to continue. Thus began the Eastham saga, destined to alter the nature of professional football in England’ (Harding, 1991, p.284).

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For the PFA, however, to achieve their goal it would necessary to prove that the FL had been ‘acting in an unlawful way, that the restraint of trade was not justified, (and) that it went further than was necessary to protect their legitimate interests’ (Harding, 1991, p.284). If successful:

‘the court would formally declare the system unlawful and therefore unenforceable; with such a declaration in hand, the Union could then force the League to renegotiate the standard contract to bring it in line with recognized principles of English law’ (Harding, 1991, pp.284-285).

In June 1963 the case against the FL would be received in the High Court ‘with Mr Justice Wilberforce (QC) as referee’ (Hardaker, 1977, p.86). It would be ‘turned into a complete review of the workings of professional football’ (Harding, 1991, p.285). During court proceedings Lloyd would be described as calm and composed when asked to provide evidence. Justice Wilberforce deemed Lloyd to be the:

‘witness who seemed … to be more in touch with the realities of professional football, i.e. a man with the necessary attributes that could enable a unified sociology of knowledge to surface, and particularly the considerations affecting the supply and interests of players than any other witness’ (Harding, 1991, pp.285-286).

In a real sense Lloyd was standing ‘during those crucial few days for all his professional forebears – John Cameron, Charlie Saer … Colin Veitch, Billy Meredith’ (Harding, 1991, p.286), and in some sense for men like Owen, Marsden et al. Lloyd’s duty would be to offer the court the ‘convictions and beliefs (of the professional players) for so long ignored, ridiculed and derided by countless League directors and FA administrators’ (Harding, 1985, p.286). Men who had been able to promote their opinions to all who would listen for well over half a century ‘simply because there had been no real opportunity to counter them, their ignorance bolstered by myth and crude economic power’ (Harding, 1985, p.286).

The FL would justify, time after time, the retain-and-transfer system on the basis that it had prevented the richest clubs in the League from purchasing all of the star players, a precautionary measure designed to maintain the competitiveness of English football. The FL would promote this fact as an egalitarian principle that was in the best interests of all concerned. Lloyd, however, would assert that without the retain-and-transfer

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system smaller clubs could prevent larger clubs from poaching their star players by offering them lengthier contracts. Thus, in giving his evidence Lloyd had:

‘helped Wilberforce accept the implausibility of … long-held League beliefs, i.e. the dissimulative nature of the FL’s transfer system, that without the retention system, football was played only in or near large centres of population … arguments repeated ad nauseam down through the ages with little or no evidence to support them other than various crude assumptions formulated back in the 1890s’ (Harding, 1991, pp.286-287).

While Wilberforce would not deem the retain-and-transfer system unlawful he would declare it to be ultra vires, i.e. above and beyond the law, and therefore a restraint of trade – a declaration that would render the retain-and-transfer system unenforceable. Wilberforce’s judgment would signify the moment when English football would transition from a one-dimensional industrial capitalist society to a two-dimensional industrial capitalist society where ‘the allocation of … labor … and the organization of work (were now) expressive of underlying social obligations and relationships’ (Hearn, 1978, p.20). The retain-and-transfer system would now be replaced by a system i.e. ‘a set of wholesome social practices’ (Freeden, 2003, p.7) that would allow an incumbent football club to resign a football player once his contract had expired on comparable terms. However, once this contract had concluded the player now had a choice, either resign or transfer to another club for a fee:

‘The players had (always had) a vision of the day when they (would be) able to move on, without strings, at the end of their contracts – a situation that would eventually be a reality in 1996 with the introduction of the Bosman free transfer, but the League remained adamant that if a player moved, the club he left would have to receive financial compensation’ (Hardaker, 1977, pp.88-89).

Hardaker would declare that ‘absolute freedom from contract (would) never come unless the clubs throw it away through lack of commonsense. Freedom (for Hardaker was) a word with two faces’ (Hardaker, 1977, p.89). However, Hardaker had always ‘failed to grasp that public opinion was firmly on the players’ side – a product of the public sphere, because common sense could no longer accept conditions of employment rooted in attitudes of nineteenth century mill-owners’ (Harding, 1991, p.277).

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In his closing statement Wilberforce would conclude by affirming that the retain-and- transfer system had been ‘an employer’s system set up in an industry where the employers (had) established a monolithic front, and where it (was) clear for the purposes of negotiation the employers are more strongly organized than the employees’ (Harding, 1991, p.287).

For the PFA the war had been won and:

‘in a sense (Lloyd) had done almost singlehandedly what the profession he represented had been unwilling to do for themselves. In October 1963, George Eastham, the man whose case had set in motion the dismantling of one of the strangest, most byzantine of employer/employee relationships, stepped out on to the Wembley Turf to play for England against FIFA in a celebration of one hundred years of the Football Association’ (Harding, 1991, p.288).

Thus, the PFA had achieved for their ranks a state of Utopia that had, previously, only been ‘realized, fleeting and partially, in social and political reality’ (Finlayson, 2005, p.13) during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Union, through threats of strike action and legal proceedings, had made it abundantly clear to the FA and the FL that they ‘could not just act as they pleased in matters affecting peoples’ livelihoods’ (Inglis, 1985, p.137).

In this respect Marx’s theory of societal development and social revolution, which had, previously, incorrectly predicted that the ‘irreducible structural antagonisms between capital and labor … would ultimately ignite class struggle (thus leading to a) working- class revolution’ (Hearn, 1978, p.246) in England during the late nineteenth century had been fully realised in English football during the early 1960s. The ability of the PFA to instill a spirit of generalisation and revolutionary passion in the professional players, i.e. Sunderland players and George Eastham, had brought to a head a class struggle in English football that had culminated in the removal of the maximum wage and the retain-and-transfer system. Such an occurrence, I believe, had equated to a revolution, ‘a necessary revolution, one necessarily arising out of the contradictions internally generated by the dynamics of capitalism’ (Hearn, 1978, p.246).

The endeavours’ of Hill and Lloyd in fighting, successfully, for the abolition and removal of the maximum wage in 1961 and the gradual disintegration of the retain-and- transfer system in 1963, represented the ability of the PFA to overcome the economic,

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political and cultural domination of the FA and the FL – feats, for example, that the Preston Chartists had failed to achieve during the nineteenth century. Hence:

‘by the end of 1860 the working class threat to industrial capitalism had been substantially weakened. The virulent opposition toward the bourgeoisie and the government, and the deep-rooted repudiation of the society generated by industrial capitalism, which characterized working-class communities throughout most of the first half of the nineteenth century, had given way to an acceptance of the established order. Writing about this period, one former Chartist observed: In our old Chartist time, it is true, Lancashire working men were in rags by the thousands; and many of them often lacked food. But their intelligence was demonstrated wherever you went. You would see them in groups discussing the great doctrine of political justice … Now you will see no such groups in Lancashire’ (Hearn, 1978, p.231).

In stark contrast, however, the PFA during the 1960s, as has been evidence, had provided staunch opposition to the industrial capitalist society that had been developed by the FA and the FL. Their disavowal of English football from 1957 to 1963 would never been be replaced by an acceptance of the established order – a situation exemplified by their determined and successful approach to countenancing the ideological domination of the governing bodies of English football. Throughout this period I believe that Hill and Lloyd possessed the physiognomies of Gramsci’s organic intellectual and Mannheim’s intelligentsia as they sought to formulate a total conception of ideology that would eventually allow for the arrival of a unified sociology of knowledge in English football – a society devoid of economic, political and cultural domination. Conversely, the beliefs of Hardaker, Sutcliffe et al., of the FL, would be consistent with those of Gramsci’s traditional intellectuals, i.e. hangovers from some previous historical period remaining loyal to ancient creeds. The inability of Sutcliffe, for example, to suppress Hill and Lloyd’s determination to establish hegemony in English football, ‘an equilibrium that took (into) account (the beliefs) of the subordinated’ (Freeden, 2003, p.20), facilitated by their capacity to open up a once declining public sphere, would leave the FA and the FL with no choice but to cede to the Union’s demands.

In this regard the PFA had successfully managed to ‘unmask and demystify the dissimulative nature’ (Freeden, 2003, p.7) of the FA and the FL’s ideological domination. In doing so Hill and Lloyd had prevented the FA and the FL from

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reaffirming themselves as the dominant social groups in English football – a feat necessary for the sustaining of relations of domination. The FA as a consequence were thus no longer be able to regard ‘themselves as patricians, heirs to the doctrine of leadership and so lawgivers by at least semi-divine right’ (Young, 1969, p.119). In light of the denial of social responsibility and the suppression of working-class culture the PFA had provided the professional players in English football with ‘alternative arrangements … (Arrangements designed) to secure … traditional protections’ (Hearn, 1978, p.129. As a result English football would now be characterised by a:

‘natural law ideology … (previously) developed in eighteenth century England (which) embodied both a conforming and a critical reason, and thus was capable of legitimating both the prevailing arrangements and the opposition to these arrangements. In its critical form, natural law ideology anticipated a more emancipated form of social organization’ (Hearn, 1978, p.63).

In juxtaposition to the achievements of the PFA in the early 1960s, the Chartist movement would only be ‘nominally perpetuated until 1858, (where) it (would only have) a minimal program and an inconsequential following’ (Hearn, 1978, p.185). The PFA, however, in 1974, seventy-seven years after its predecessor, the AFPU, had endeavoured to ‘forge a negotiating link based on equality of status with the Football League and the FA’ (Harding, 2009, p.150) would still be resolute in their determination to obtain even greater freedoms for its members. ‘Anything short of total freedom (for the players would be) an imposition on players’ (Harding, 1991, p.319). The PFA believed that the transfer system, while devoid of its retain element, was still:

‘designed for one purpose, to safeguard the financial interests of clubs with literally no concern for the players. At the 1975 AGM, Cliff Lloyd would announce that the Management Committee had thought it desirable to compromise on the question of freedom of contract despite the decision taken at the last AGM, and he would receive enthusiastic backing from the assembled delegates. The reason for this apparent retreat was that the PFA sensed that influence, even power, in the professional game was moving inexorably in its direction. And though the League would delay, prevaricate and resist during the next four years of dogged negotiations, a peaceful resolution was under way’ (Harding, 1991, p.319).

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In conclusion, Marx and Engels’ vivid portrayal of the proletariat in The Communist Manifesto, first published in 1888, neatly surmises the society of English football, from 1893 to 1963, and the struggle endured by professional players’ in attempting to overcome the ideological domination inflicted upon them by the FL:

‘In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up until the point where the war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the sway of the proletariat. The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage labour. Wage labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable’ (Marx and Engels, 1967, pp.93-94).

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Conclusion

This thesis contends that the events of 1961 and 1963 symbolised the professional players and their union representatives’ ability to successfully ignite a Marxist working- class revolution – a feat that would represent the conclusion of class struggle in English football. In this regard class struggle had facilitated ‘the arrival of (an) open, classless and affluent society’ (McLeod, 1990, p.614) for English football. However, arguments over the wages of professional players would once again persist in 2017 when leader of Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn, would state, that if elected, he would introduce a maximum wage for Britain’s most highly paid, citing football players as an example of those whose earnings would be capped. Corbyn feared that Brexit would:

‘see the UK become a grossly unequal, bargain basement economy. If we want to live in a more egalitarian society, and fund our public services, we cannot go on creating worse levels of inequality. I think the salaries paid to some footballers are simply ridiculous. The Labour leader, who is an Arsenal fan, said he thought his team’s manager Arsene Wenger would probably … like there to be a maximum wage cap on the whole of the Premier League’ (The Guardian, 2017a).

In response Marina Hyde, columnist for The Guardian, would lament Corbyn’s choice of professions with which to exemplify his argument for a wage cap. Last week:

‘Corbyn declared that there should be a cap on grotesque salaries. And whaddayaknow – the very first example of such salaries upon which he alighted was in football. I hate to break it to them, but whingeing about footballers is not a big idea. Aside from anything else, top-flight football is one of the few engines of social mobility that still works in this country. Albeit for only a talented few, but hey – that already makes it more effective in this regard than almost every other profession. Yet it is footballer remuneration that is mentioned most frequently and most disparagingly by people in public life seeking to get attention. What is it that they so detest about top-flight football, with its remorseless habit of creating working-class millionaires’ (The Guardian, 2017 b)?

If Hyde’s contention that there are people in public life, including the leader of the Labour party, that detest football’s ability to act as a mechanism for social mobility and

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for creating working-class millionaires, is to be accepted then I suggest that class struggle appears, on the surface, to be very much apparent in contemporary English football. Such a reality would thus confirm Engels’ 19th century proclamations about the plight of the proletariat in England as having significant relevance to this society. For Engels:

‘the proletariat (were) working men who had no prospect of rising above their class. The working class became, for the first time an integral, permanent class of the population, whereas it (had) formerly often been merely a transition leading to the bourgeoisie. Now he who was born to toil had no other prospect than that of remaining a toiler all his life. In spite of all this, the English middle class, especially the manufacturing class, which is enriched directly by means of poverty of the workers, persists in ignoring this poverty’ (Engels, 1993, pp.29- 31).

In contrast to Corbyn’s wage cap, offered as an instrument with which to provide a more egalitarian society designed to bridge inequality, Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, believed that football clubs in London should pay their staff what he dubbed the London Living Wage. While top-flight, 21st century English football, had acted as a mechanism for the working-classes to ascend the social strata, Khan believed that it had not afforded similar opportunities to the operational staff working at those football clubs. Khan avowed that as Mayor for all Londoners he would be determined to:

‘create a city of opportunity for everyone, and the London Living Wage is a crucial part of challenging low pay in the capital. London is the best city in the world, but it can't be right that so many hard-working Londoners are struggling to make ends meet and keep up with the high cost of living’ (Croydon Advertiser, 2017).

Khan would write letters to football clubs including Arsenal, West Ham and Crystal Palace advising them that by paying their staff the London Living Wage it would be a ‘win-win situation for their businesses as it could help recruitment, retention and productivity of staff. Mr Khan said. I’m calling on them to sign up and pay their staff the increased rate’ (Evening Standard, 2017). While class struggle in contemporary English football, post-1963, was no longer being fought, for example, between the professional players and the FA, it appears as though such a struggle is persisting between football clubs in London and their operational staff. It is still yet to be seen, whether or not, these

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clubs will adhere to Khan’s assertions to pay their staff the London Living Wage and, whether or not, such a decision would represent the realisation of a Marxist working- class revolution. Only time will tell.

However, before this thesis is to be drawn to a conclusion it would not be acceptable to adjourn further analysis of class struggle in English football at this juncture. While the main body of this research has been focused on the period between 1883 and 1963 and, in particular, on the struggle of the professional players, it would be amiss if analysis of class struggle were not extended, albeit briefly, to identifying its presence, not soon after the events of 1961 and 1963, and in particular on the struggle between the governing bodies of English football and an alternate faction of the working-class. As a result, focus was directed towards the issue of hooliganism from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, i.e.:

‘forms of verbal as a well as physical violence, the throwing of missiles at players, match officials, club officials and other fans, the vandalising of club and private property; fist fights, fights involving kicking; and fights involving weapons such as knives and even guns’ (Academis.edu, 2004, p.2).

For The University of Birmingham such acts were committed by:

‘the ignorant working-class yob who attends football matches as an opportunity to get into a fight, and not from any genuine interest in the game itself. The hooligan is typically a working-class youth of limited educational background, doing an unskilled or semi-skilled job’ (University of Birmingham, 1973, p.8).

Alexander Stimpfle, from the University of Bayreuth, stipulated that the hooligan was typically:

‘male, young, and single. He has low education, but he is by no means excluded from society. This person is employed and, thus, can be classified in the lower working class’ (Stimpfle, 2009, p.4).

For The University of Leicester hooligans were ‘generally in their late teens or their 20s … mainly in manual or lower clerical occupations or, to a lesser extent, unemployed or working in the grey economy’ (Sir Norman Chester Centre for Football Research, 2001, p.5). Hooligans were deemed to have emanated from social backgrounds:

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‘where shared norms legitimate a more ready resort to overt violence and aggressiveness in everyday social relations than is usually sanctioned among the middle class and upper classes. These groups tend to choose soccer as a context in which to fight because it, too, is about masculinity, territory and excitement. Given a widespread pattern of travel to away matches, the game also regularly provides a set of ready-made opponents with whom to fight’ (Academis.edu, 2004, p.17).

Such acts of hooliganism were thus a means with which young working-class males could practise a specific type of hostile masculinity – a masculinity that was held in high esteem by the working-class community itself. It would be in these communities where the young hooligan male would become accustomed and:

‘socialised into standards that value and reward publicly assertive and openly aggressive and violent expressions of masculinity. Young men are expected to be able to look after themselves. Fights can be anticipated and enjoyed, not just because of the challenges they offer, but also because of the how they make the protagonist feel’ (Sir Norman Chester Centre for Football Research, 2001, p.6).

Sociologist, John Clarke, would comment that ever since the Industrial Revolution the working class has been subjected to restrictions, i.e. the factory system. Football and, in particular, hooliganism offered the working class an alternate way of experiencing their own reality. Football had been a sport founded on physical conflict where the skills involved in the game:

‘were primarily physical ones. Working-class life placed a high value on physical prowess, partly because the work experience centred round largely physical tasks. There was no place either in the factory or on the football field for the pansy. Football reflects very accurately the working-class outlook on violence. In this alternative moral universe violence is legitimated as nowhere else in society ‘ (University of Birmingham, 1973, pp.1, 2).

English football thus offered the working class an:

‘appropriate and attractive venue for testing masculine identities (for) young men whose opportunities for status and excitement via other channels (was) relatively limited. In many ways, football (was) seen as the appropriate venue

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for these sorts of aggressive rivalries, partly because of the working class roots and traditions of the game but also because of the culturally prescribed territorial and masculine values which are intrinsic to it’ (Sir Norman Chester Centre for Football Research, 2001, pp.6, 11).

Sociologists, including Ian Taylor and John Clarke, would put forth a Marxist explanation for hooliganism as they believed such behaviour was representative of a ‘working-class resistance movement’ (Stimpfle, 2009, p.8) – a movement standing in direct opposition to the football elite and their unremitting commodification of the game. For Clarke, the young fan was:

‘caught in an impossible dilemma … his game, his team (were) being taken over by the bourgeoisie, it (was) being made respectable and he disapproved. The views of football held by the clubs and the fans (had) drifted apart, and the fans (lacked) the articulacy to bridge the difference through formal channels. The fans (were) engaged in an attempt to perpetuate some of the traditional features of the game which (were) being lost in its colonisation by the bourgeoisie. Thus, they (kept) alive the traditional rivalries which (had) become of less importance to the clubs’ (University of Birmingham, 1973, pp.8-9).

Such a Marxist explanation, however, would be repudiated by academics, including Eric Dunning from the University of Leicester, whose antithetical, figurational approach would state that such behaviour had been ‘driven by the hooligans’ quest to feel emotional arousal’ (Stimpfle, 2009, p.8). For Dunning, hooliganism had been perpetuated and exacerbated by the media who instead of condemning such behaviour had actually praised fans for their actions. In this regard they had contributed to:

‘a positive feedback cycle which (had furthered) an already occurring tendency for spectator violence at matches. (In 1966) the emergence of the tabloid press and the staging of the World Cup Finals in England contributed to a pattern of sensationalistic reporting in the build-up to the Finals and afterwards which helped, as it were, to advertise the game to groups like the newly rising skinheads as a context where fights and exciting action regularly take place. Media sensationalism contributed to the pattern of football hooliganism that emerged in the mid 1960s and lasted until the 1980s … football matches came to be used by organised groups of young, primarily working-class males as a focus and context for fighting’ (Dunning, 1994, p.130).

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Clarke, however, believed that fighting for the skinheads was more than just exciting action. For them it was a method with which to reassert:

‘old traditions, a defence of that culture which seemed threatened with contamination by middle class styles and values. Everything, the clothes, the haircut, the attitudes and the violence are all overdrawn, as if in self-caricature. So, because the existing youth cultural options did not fit with their experience of the world, the skinheads created their own, and the inevitable setting for the re-enactment of the traditional working-class values was the traditional Saturday meeting place of the class, the football ground. Football hooliganism must therefore be seen not only as an attempt to defend football for the class, but also as a micro-cosmic reflection of an attempt to defend the culture against the encroachment of the bourgeoisie’ (University of Birmingham, 1973, pp.11-14).

While Dunning believed the mid-1960s represented a watershed moment for hooliganism in English football the general consensus in the available literature would indicate that such behaviour had been of grave concern to the authorities ever ‘since the birth of the sport, but it (was) only really since the 1960s that it began to be perceived as a serious problem’ (Politics, 2008). For Taylor:

‘football violence was a working class phenomenon, predominantly consisting of male proponents who opposed the advancing commodification (professionalisation, internationalisation and commercialisation) of the game. It was argued that (these) social circumstances had become a force, which had generated a sense of alienation for traditional fans in relation to their local clubs’ (Teesside University, 2008, pp.1, 3).

For Clarke, professionalisation referred to:

‘an increasingly calculatory awareness in the game of technical requirement for success (tactics, improvements to training methods, etc.). Internationalisation (described) the increasing introduction into the game of foreign competition as a supplement to the domestic game (i.e. the European Cup). (Whereas) the commercialisation of football (would) be found both in the increasing financial concerns of the game, rising transfer fees, entrance prices and gate receipts’ (University of Birmingham, 1973, p.5).

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Taylor and Clarke believed that such commodification had attracted the middle classes in their droves to football – a phenomenon that had subsequently alienated:

‘working-class fans from the game. Football hooliganism … should (therefore) be interpreted as a kind of working-class resistance movement, as the democratic response by the rump of a soccer subculture to the bourgeoisification of their game’ (Spaaij, 2006, p.24).

While this thesis postulated that the removal of the maximum wage and the retain-and- transfer system had facilitated the arrival of an open, classless and affluent society for English football, Clarke, believed that English society, as a whole, during the 1960s England had been characterised by:

‘the age of affluence, consensus politics, and the emergence of the Classless Society. (A situation that would lead) football clubs (to anticipate) the disappearance in this new social order of the traditional cloth-capped football fan. (Thus, they) felt they would have to compete for audiences with the providers of alternative types of entertainment, the cinema and television especially. Consequently, the game had to be made as exciting and dramatic as possible to appeal to the uncommitted. The spectator had to be made comfortable, and his every whim catered for. The key sociological concept of the period was that of Embourgeoisement’ (University of Birmingham, 1973, pp.5-7).

For Taylor, it was in direct response to the embourgeiosement of the English game to which hooliganism would emerge. For those in authority English football was no longer just a game to be played but rather a sport that could be developed into a lucrative business – a business run by businessmen. This development would subsequently alienate:

‘the majority of the working-class football fans who felt excluded from this mainstream approach to the game of football. Hooligan activities (should therefore) be interpreted as a working-class resistance movement … driven by the desire of regaining control over their favourite sport’ (Stimpfle, 2009, p.8).

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s hooliganism would continue to remain a serious issue. However, during this period, acts of violence would be carried out, solely, within the

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confines of the football stadia. The introduction of measures designed to mitigate such behaviour, including the introduction of all-seater stadia, would drive violence away from football grounds. Such behaviour, as a consequence, would now be committed in locations were it could not be contained or controlled. Seminal incidents, including the Heysel disaster29 in 1985 and the Hillsborough disaster30 in 1989 would hasten the introduction of new laws pertaining to football violence. The 1986 Public Order Act:

‘permitted courts to ban supporters from grounds, while the Football Spectators Act 1989 provided for banning convicted hooligans from attending international matches. (In addition), the Football Offences Act 1991 created specific offences of throwing missiles onto pitches, participating in indecent or racist chanting and going onto the pitch without lawful authority’ (Politics, 2008).

The events of 1985 and 1989 would confirm the 1980s as the dark decade for English football. Subsequent to these events, the authorities would introduce further measures, i.e. metal fencing intended to separate rival sets of supporters. Hooliganism was now being directly confronted by the authorities who were now committed to introducing:

‘more diversity and calm groups to the games. Consequently, seasonal tickets prices jumped up by 300% within one year. This pricing out was thought to support a more civilized atmosphere in the stadium. Paralyzed from the past incidents and hit by those new policies, hooliganism was kept quiet during the beginning of the 1990s. Above all, the stadia themselves were no longer seen as a dangerous place for the normal spectator whose safety really increased’ (Stimpfle, 2009, pp.2-4).

While Taylor and Clarke would be unwavering in their attempts to frame hooliganism as a working-class resistance movement, as has be shown, there have been substantial divisions within the social sciences ‘concerning explanations of football hooliganism, with often vitriolic debate between Marxist sociologists, so-called figurationalists, social psychologists and more empirically oriented researchers. (Divisions, which have)

29 Heysel Stadium disaster on 29 May 1985 occurred prior to the 1985 European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus. After Liverpool fans charged the Juventus fans, 39 people, mostly fans of Juventus, would lose their lives with a further 600 fans injured. English clubs would as a result be banned from European competition until 1990. 30 Hillsborough disaster on 15 April 1989 occurred during the 1989 FA Cup semi-final match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. 96 fans would lose their lives while a further 766 would be injured as a result of a human crush resulting from overcrowding.

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hindered the emergence of truly multi-disciplinary perspective’ (Social Issues Research Centre, 1999, p.1).

For the Social Issues Research Centre, in contrast to the Marxist approach, and in agreement with Dunning, they identified the media’s provocative approach to the reporting of violence at football stadia, and in particular, to their use of inflammatory and ‘sensationalist headlines ... (as having) actually contributed to the problem’ (Social Issues Research Centre, 1999, p.2). In contrast, Alexander Stimpfle in his paper English Hooliganism – A different social movement he points to the explanations offered by Armstrong and Brimson and their belief that the growth of hooliganism, which took-off after the Second World War, had:

‘coincided with the end of English national military service in the 1960s. (A situation that had) altered young men’s horizons dramatically. Now the match- going took over the aura of a credibility test and masculinity would be proved in the context of football’ (Stimpfle, 2009, pp.1-2).

Equally, The University of Exeter would link the rise of hooliganism to the ‘overriding culture of youth rebellion and moral panic’ (University of Exeter, 2001) that had arisen during the 1960s. For youth groups, including the Teddy Boys, English football was now a place where ‘fights could easily take place (and where) alliances (could be) formed amongst young men on match days. (A) development (that had led to) a strong, local feeling that had to be defended against other groups’ (University of Exeter, 2001).

For Stimpfle, youth groups, such as the skinheads and the Teddy boys, would share a similar organisational structure that was ‘very egalitarian, consensus-oriented and rather unorganized’ (Stimpfle, 2009, p.5) in its configuration. While other social movements could be identified as having a ‘clear mission or aim to change their social or political environment, hooligans with their disruptive behaviour appeared to have no purpose or deliberate goal at all’ (Stimpfle, 2009, p.6). Stimpfle disagreed with Taylor and Clarke’s attempts to place a ‘deeper meaning in the violent behaviour’ (Stimpfle, 2009, p.6) of the hooligan. Similarly, Dunning believed that neither that Taylor nor Clarke had succeeded in carrying out:

‘systematic in-depth research into soccer hooliganism (as they had neglected) the significance of the fact that the phenomenon principally involves conflict between working-class groups – groups that only become involved in regular

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conflict with the football authorities and the police … as part of an attempt to fight among themselves’ (Academis.edu, 2004, p.14).

In contrast, Dunning’s figurational approach involved ‘an exploration of the meanings of hooligan behaviour via an analysis of verbatim statements by the hooligans themselves … the location of football hooligans in … the class system and … an examination of the dynamics of the relationships between them and groups in the wider society’ (Academis.edu, 2004, p.15).

For Stimpfle, Dunning and the University of Leicester had so far managed to collect the:

‘most of the significant empirical data related to Hooligans. They (understood) hooligan behaviour to be driven by the hooligans’ quest to feel emotional arousal. (They did)) not see the fan violence as some kind of movement against the football elites in order to fight the commercialization of the game. Basing their hypothesis on a wide array of personal statements by hooligans, they conclude that next to the pursuit of excitement, also masculinity and physical strength play a crucial role. As these hooligans with their working-class backgrounds do not enjoy any prestige or power in their normal lives, it is the football environment, where they earn respect and acknowledgement among the hooligan members. Displaying their virile capabilities they acquire the meaning and status that they usually lack’ (Stimpfle, 2009, pp.8-9).

Stimpfle believed that hooliganism had arisen out of the gradual breakdown of the hooligans’ society, where:

‘this missing group-belonging, the dissolution of traditional social ties, such as a strong church, (had led) to irrational thought, hysteria, and the break-out of violence. The feeling of belonging to a group with a common identity (was a) way for hooligans to cope with the vanishing order of how society used to be organized’ (Stimpfle, 2009 pp.14, 16).

He suggests that the hooligan was not in:

‘pursuit of political or social change (as he did not seek to change) the political or social environment to the positive. Hooligan aggression (was not a) means to accomplish any kind of major societal transformation. (They were) simply not

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politically motivated to participate in collective actions (and they did) not seek for changing the world through revolutionary engagement’ (Stimpfle, 2009, pp.9-12).

As, has previously been mentioned, hooliganism would be dealt a significant blow during the early 1990s as a result of measures designed to contain its prominence after the events of Heysel and Hillsborough in 1985 and 1989. The building of all-seater stadia, the introduction of laws pertaining specifically to violent acts committed at football stadia and an increase in ticket prices would all contribute to keeping hooliganism quiet during the 1990s. However, this pricing-out of the football hooligan would not only inhibit the attendance and behaviour of the working-class yob but also that of the law-abiding member of the working-class community who could no longer afford to support their team on a match day.

The University of Leicester would suggest that English football’s drive to eradicate hooliganism in the 1990s, highlighted by its:

‘new commericialised and highly marketised format, (had actually left) behind sections of the game’s traditional audience, including, perhaps, some hooligan fans. High-ticket prices; the loss of the physical attractions of terracing; the sometimes oppressive management and stewarding of the football audience; and the extensive merchandising of top English clubs (had all acted in ways) to regulate and control attendance’ (Sir Norman Chester Centre for Football Research, 2001, pp.17-18).

While the Marxist approach to explaining hooliganism, put forth by Taylor and Clarke, would be deemed inadequate, for example, by Dunning and Stimpfle, such an approach could be used to explain the Football Supporters’ Federation struggle, for example, to overcome this pricing-out of the working-class supporter – a struggle that would manifest itself through the introduction of their Twenty’s Plenty Campaign in 2013. This campaign would seek to coerce the Premier League into capping away tickets prices at £20. Once their efforts are viewed within a Marxist context, i.e. as a tacit attempt to return English football to the traditional working-class supporter, then this particular movement could, unlike hooliganism, be regarded as a working-class resistance movement standing in direct opposition to the football elite and their unremitting commodification of the game.

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For John Williams, the:

‘formation of the Premier League in 1992 and the marketing of elite clubs (had represented a) turning point (in English football). Publicly claiming to be a middle-class football fan was no longer a social faux pas. New, more affluent older supporters were drawn in. (Subsequently), lots of traditional working-class fans … stopped attending. The market is said to decide ticket prices, but it also excludes many poorer fans’ (Football Republik, 2014).

After the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 the introduction of improved stadia had placed:

‘a considerable financial burden on clubs. The money that television deals with Sky generated from 1992 onwards could have limited the costs passed on to fans but instead it was used to fuel a hyperinflation in player wages. This enabled the Premier League to attract many of the world’s best players. With top-level stadiums sold out, clubs became less and less concerned with controlling prices. Between 1989 and 1999, Premier League ticket prices rose by 312%. By 2008, the Premier League’s own research suggested that 75% of its match-attending fans were middle class. By 2011, there were reports that at some clubs ticket prices had risen by 1000% in two decades’ (History and Policy, 2016).

As a consequence, in 2013, the Football Supporters’ Federation, as has been identified, would respond to these hyper-inflated ticket prices by embarking upon a Marxist inspired struggle against the Premier League. While Taylor and Clarke would be derided for believing hooliganism to be a working-class resistance movement standing in direct opposition to the football elite, a feat, that if successful, would have highlighted the continued existence of class struggle in English football, post-1963, such an explanation, for the actions’ of the Football Supporters’ Federation, from 2013 to 2016, could be achieved.

While the enduring struggle over professionalism, from 1888 to 1963, for example, had been fought between the proletariat (professional players and their Union representatives), and the bourgeoisie (the FL), from 2013 to 2016, the struggle over ticket prices would be fought between the Football Supporters’ Federation and the supporters whom they represented (proletariat), and the Premier League (bourgeoisie). In this manner 21st century English football will be identified as having the characteristics consistent with the modern bourgeois society as described by Marx and

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Engels’ in The Communist Manifesto. Taking this into account, at the beginning of the 2016/17 season, fifteen of the twenty Premier League clubs in England would be owned by multi-millionaires. Investments that the online socialist magazine, The Point, would view as being nothing more than business opportunities designed ‘to increase their already sizeable Swiss bank accounts’ (The Point, 2017). The magazine lamented a situation where a relentless pursuit of profits had come at the expense of contributing to the social welfare of the ‘consumers, communities and furthermore, society as a whole’ (The Point, 2017). For The Point, the Premier League had facilitated a situation where clubs, year on year, could increase ticket prices, thus forcing supporters to:

‘shell out much more – an ever-greater percentage of their wages – in order to support their team actively. This year (2014) – with hardly any exceptions – has seen a 7% average in the rise of season ticket prices in the Premier League leaving the average price to watch your teams home games at around £800. As well as simply watching football matches, ordinary fans are bombarded from all sides with adverts encouraging them to place bets on them. Betting agencies are essentially preying on desperate, underemployed or unemployed members of the working class. And what better way to do this than through the one thing people use to distract themselves from the horrible reality of life under austerity?’ (Socialist Appeal, 2014).

The Point believed that such a situation could ultimately have been avoided as clubs could have bolstered ‘profits (while providing) affordable ticketing for working class communities’ (The Point, 2017). Offered in juxtaposition to the Premier League clubs, Bayern Munich, the most popular and successful football club in Germany, were identified as understanding the responsibility it had to its local community:

‘Uli Hoeness, Bayern president stated: we could charge more than £104. Let’s say we charged £300. We’d get £2m more in income, but what is £2m to us? In a transfer discussion you argue the sum for five minutes. But the difference between £104 and £300 is huge for the fan. We do not think the fans are like cows, who you milk. Football has got to be for everyone. That is the big difference between us and England’ (The Point, 2017).

In stark contrast to Premier League clubs, Bayern Munich, recognised that it was their duty to ‘promote healthy lifestyles, (to) encourage multicultural integration and (to help) develop society as a whole’ (The Point, 2017). However, their English counterparts had

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rejected such a mantra in pursuit of one that would ‘provide substantial profits for multimillionaire investors at the expense of life long supporters (who were now) being turned away at turnstiles through expensive ticket prices’ (The Point, 2017). The Point concluded by stating that Leon Trotsky, Marxist revolutionary and theorist, had proposed that:

‘any future revolution in Britain will inevitably awaken in the working class through the most unusual passions, listing sport and specifically football, as a potential catalyst of societal change. With the aforementioned protesting against multimillionaire owner’s introduction of extortionate ticket prices in the English game that is ultimately felt through by the poorest supporters in stadiums across the country, the murmurings of revolt are formulating’ (The Point, 2017).

For English football, these murmurings, as has been mentioned, would develop into a fully fledged revolution in 2013, when the Football Supporters’ Federation, a ‘democratic organisation representing the rights of fans in England and Wales’ (Football Supports’ Federation, 2013), introduced their Twenty’s Plenty Campaign … a campaign that was built upon a ‘critical mass of outrage over away ticket prices’ (The Guardian, 2015). The Federation argued that without away supporters the Premier League would have been unable to generate ever-increasing profits through advancements in broadcasting agreements with TV companies, including SKY. The Federation contended that the introduction of such a campaign, had previously, received little support from supporters due to a fear that a protest, i.e. the relinquishing of season tickets, would have gone unheard. However, the Twenty’s Plenty Campaign had now:

‘for the first time … allowed supporters from every top-flight team (to ) put aside their loyalties and hold aloft banners that say Twenty’s plenty. Over the past 25 years money has flowed into football enriching players, owners, executives and agents – we think it’s about time fans saw some of the benefits too, say the Football Supporters’ Federation chief executive, Kevin Miles. Nine out of 10 fans feel that football is too expensive (and that) fans’ loyalty and commitment to their clubs is being exploited’ (The Guardian, 2015).

From a Marxist perspective, I believe that the Football Supporters’ Federation, through their campaign, were attempting to instill in the supporters a ‘spirit of generalization and revolutionary passion’ (Hearn, 1918, p.245), characteristics deemed by Marx to be necessary for the formation of a working-class revolution. Such characteristics

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previously instilled in the professional players by Hill and Lloyd of the PFA.

Consequently, the pressure placed upon the Premier League by the Federation would lead the former to introduce the Away Supporters’ Initiative in autumn 2013 – a scheme, which would seek to put aside £12m of funding over the following three seasons for travel and ticket subsidies for away supporters. However, at this time it appeared unlikely that any club in the Premier League would be willing to accept the introduction of a £20 cap on all away ticket prices:

‘No matter how sensible and meaningful such a move may seem in reputational terms, (football clubs) cling jealously to their ability to set their own prices. (Clubs) continue to neglect the need to nurture the next generation in favour of short-termism and chasing the bottom line. Slaven Bilic, the West Ham manager, had a refreshingly different view. (He stated that) football is not golf or polo for VIPs, for the elite … football is the people’s sport, it is a sport for the masses. It shouldn’t be a privilege to be able to go by yourself, with your mates, your girlfriend, your wife or kids to football game. It should be there for everybody’ (The Guardian, 2015).

During 2014, the Socialist Appeal, an organisation that sought ‘to fight for the revolutionary transformation of society, calling for a socialist programme for workers and youth’ (The Socialist Appeal, 2014) would use English football as a platform with which to put forth its Marxist leanings. They professed that football:

‘continues to take pride of place … amongst the working people in Britain. (However), British football is becoming increasingly disengaged from its roots in local working class communities. With every new football season, it becomes clearer that wealth and power in the game are concentrated in the hands of a few businessmen who have little interest in the sport itself. Football has seemingly gone from being a weekly antidote to the ills of capitalism to being the very embodiment of this competitive system. Fans see owners, agents, managers, even players, acting solely in the interests of profit and making supposedly uninformed decisions about football matters, which spoil the enjoyment of those who pay to come and support their team’ (Socialist Appeal, 2014).

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For the Socialist Appeal there was no other alternative but to attack at the source:

‘the degenerate and sick elements in football … (i.e.) the capitalist system. The only way for working people to reclaim fully an identity they may have found through football … is through socialism. Only in a truly free and democratic society – under the control of the working people – in which wealth is shared among the many and not funnelled to the few can any healthy competition played in a communal spirit be restored’ (The Socialist Appeal, 2014).

However, it would not be until early 2016 that the Socialist Appeal’s rhetoric would be heeded and the Football Supporters’ Federation would begin to achieve its principal aim. Consequently, on 8 March 2016 English football would take its:

‘most significant step in a generation to reduce ticket prices (as for) the next three seasons all tickets for away supporters would be capped at £30. The Premier League’s Attendance Working Group, which was behind 2013’s Away Supporters Initiative, worked with clubs to find a policy solution to help re- engage traditional match-going fans’ (The Independent, 2016).

Clive Efford, the Labour Party’s sports’ spokesman stated that while the £30 cap was ‘still £10 above the level that fans have called for’ (BBC, 2016) it was an imperative that the Premier League was no longer ‘extortionately expensive for match-going fans … it is important that traditional fans, whose passion is at the heart of their clubs and our game, are not priced out’ (The Independent, 2016).

While the news was indeed positive, Kevin Miles affirmed that more could still be done to lessen the financial burden placed upon supporters. However, he stipulated that:

‘it would be churlish to do anything other than celebrate that Premier League clubs seem to have for once listened to fans, taken that message, and valued the important contribution of away fans and matched that with money. It’s for the good of the clubs, it’s for the good of the people who are trying to sell the broadcasting rights, for the good of the spectacle of the occasion. So everyone’s a winner in this and it’s definitely going to make a difference to a lot of people when they think: Can I afford to go on this away trip or not? Hopefully we’ll have a lot more yesses than afraid nots’ (The Guardian, 2016).

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In this respect, the Federation’s ability to coerce the Premier League into capping away ticket prices at £30, rather than the desired £20, would represent the initial stages of revolution in 21st century English football. A revolution that if sustained and developed could, ceteris paribus, be transformed into a fully fledged Marxist working-class revolution. Such a revolution could then be viewed as being analogous to that achieved by Hill and Lloyd, post-1961, – a revolution that would lead Premier League clubs to be more akin to clubs in Germany. Clubs who are:

‘promoted as groups of interest, fostering an environment where governing bodies and local communities work together to increase the development of societies … through the game of football. (Where) parliament understands the role sport plays in democratic societies and politics … (as they acknowledge that) football has an immense impact on culture (by) providing support for disadvantaged people, public health issues and also (the) re-integration (of) criminal offenders into society’ (The Point, 2017).

While the Marxist approach to explaining hooliganism as a working-class resistance movement would be rejected, for example, by the University of Leicester in favour of classifying such behaviour as being grounded in the protagonists’ ‘quest to feel emotionally arousal’ (Stimpfle, 2009, pp.8-9), the ability of the Federation to coerce the Premier League into capping away tickets at £30 can, I believe, be explained with the aid of such theory. The Federation’s accomplishment would thus represent an era defining moment in English football, one that would re-engage the traditional match- going fan – a feat that would represent the return of English football to its historical roots, i.e. the working-class occupational communities in England. An achievement that would be indicative of a truly free and democratic society.

In this regard, the undertakings of the Football Supporters’ Federation can be viewed as being comparable, in their Marxist hues, to those of the AFPU, the AFPTU and, most significantly, those of Hill and Lloyd of the PFA. While the PFA had managed to achieve its ultimate goal of replacing the maximum wage and the retain-and-transfer system with a ‘set of wholesome social practices that (would provide) the empirical basis of true social consciousness’ (Freeden, 2003, p.7) it had taken the Association, in its various guises, over sixty years to do so. In contrast, however, the Federation, founded in 2002, had managed to make substantial inroads into alleviating supporters’ frustrations over ticket prices, after only fourteen years in existence.

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Subsequent to the formal conclusion of this thesis, on 6 April 2017, the Federation would take another important step towards realising their overall objective as it agreed a deal with Virgin Media for away ticket prices in the Premier League, albeit only for a trial period, to be:

‘capped at £20 over the next few weeks. The Premier League had already agreed to cap away tickets at £30 for the next three seasons, but the The FSF have now struck another deal with Virgin Media that will see travelling fans reimbursed when they pay over £20 for a single fixture at any top-flight club. The FSF’s latest league-wide price cap will cover Premier League matches between April 15th and 23rd, though they hope to extend it further in the future. Brigitte Trafford of Virgin Media added: We want to be part of a positive change for Premier League football fans across the country and are stepping up by subsidising away tickets to £20. Away fans are at the heart of the game and their tickets need to be affordable. Without them, the atmosphere in grounds is reduced and their teams don’t feel supported’ (Who Ate All the Pies, 2017).

In agreement the Federation declared that this:

‘ground-breaking initiative recognises the loyalty and commitment away fans show their club throughout the season. It follows the FSF’s call to the Premier League and clubs to make ticket prices more affordable for visiting fans. Kevin Miles, chief executive of the FSF, said: The Football Supporters’ Federation has a long-standing rally cry – Twenty’s Plenty for Away Tickets. We’re delighted that Virgin Media has helped make that a reality at many upcoming top-flight games. Thanks to this Twenty’s Plenty deal, tens of thousands of top- flight fans could potentially save hundreds of thousands of pounds in the coming weeks. It’s a great idea’ (The Football Supporters’ Federation, 2017).

For the Federation, the 6 April 2017 would represent another momentous day in their campaign against away ticket prices as it would add credence to the belief that football in England had, for too long, been too expensive for the traditional working-class supporter. While such an agreement with Virgin Media would be important for the sustaining of their campaign, as has been mentioned, for the Federation to achieve its principal aim, such a cap would need to be extended beyond the initial trial period and be agreed to by the Premier League – an agreement devoid of Virgin’s Media’s assistance. As of yet the motives behind Virgin Media’s decision to form an association

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with the Federation are still yet to be analysed. If such an agreement could be reached in the coming months and years, in my opinion, then and only then, can such a radical alteration to the constitution of top-flight English football be representative of a truly Marxist working-class revolution. What is for certain is that class struggle is still apparent in contemporary English football, for how long, however, is yet to be seen.

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